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64th Congress, 2d Session House Document No. 1366 



U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS 

ROYAL MEEKER, Commissioner 



BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES \ j WHOLE Ofi£ 

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS/ ' ' ' } NUMBER £\J\J 



EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT SERIES: No. 5 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM 
OF LABOR EXCHANGES 



B. LASKER 




OCTOBER, 1916 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1916 



Monograph 



64th Congress, 2d Session House Document No. 1366 



U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS 

ROYAL MEEKER, Commissioner 



BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES! (WHOLE Ofk£ 

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS/ ' ' ' { NUMBER L,\J\J 



EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT SERIES: No. 5 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM 
OF LABOR EXCHANGES 



B. LASKER 




OCTOBER, 1916 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1916 

flviotfccvr IS 5 <-, e . 



p 



SI!" 1 






ADDITIONAL COPIES 

OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM 

THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

AT 

10 CENTS PER COPY 
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D. of D. 
JAN 19 1917 



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CONTENTS. 

Page. 

Introduction 5 

Object of labor exchanges 5, 6 

Initial difficulties 7-9 

Organization 9-11 

Methods of registering applications 12-14 

Methods of registering vacancies 14, 15 

Methods of filling vacancies 15-19 

Procedure in case of labor disputes 19-21 

General results 21-25 

Effect of unemployment insurance on work of labor exchanges 25-30 

Effect of labor exchanges on casual labor 30-36 

Effect of labor exchanges on seasonal labor 36, 37 

Effect of labor exchanges on female labor 37-39 

Effect of labor exchanges on juvenile labor 39-43 

Advantages to employers 44-47 

Advantages to workers 47-52 

Advantages to the State 53-55 

Conclusions 55, 56 

Appendix A. — Labor Exchanges Act, 1909 . . , 57, 58 

Appendix B. — General regulations for labor exchanges 58-61 

Appendix C. — Special rules for labor exchanges as to registration of juvenile 

applicants 62, 63 

Appendix D. — Memorandum by Board of Trade and Board of Education as to 

cooperation between labor exchanges and educational authorities 63-66 

Appendix E. — Schedule used in unofficial investigation of labor exchanges, 

1913 66,67 

3 



BULLETIN OF THE 
U. S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

WHOLE NO. 206. WASHINGTON. OCTOBER, 1916. 

THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 

- BY B. LASKER. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Under the Labor Exchanges Act of 1909, a complete national 
system of employment bureaus was established for the whole of the 
United Kingdom. It was the first of the kind and resulted from an 
intensive study of the problem of unemployment, both private and 
official, during and after a number of exceptionally severe trade de- 
pressions and more especially from a unanimous recommendation of 
the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress, 
1905 to 1909. It is administered by the national Board of Trade 
through a department created for that purpose, of which Mr. TV. H. 
Beveridge, one of the foremost authorities on the organization of the 
labor market, is the director. 

OBJECT OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 

The Labor Exchanges Act was passed primarily for the purpose 
of increasing and improving means of communication between em- 
ployers seeking workpeople and workpeople seeking employment. 1 
The Board of Trade was given powers to establish labor exchanges — 
called so in distinction to existing labor "bureaus" which, as we 
shall see, had somewhat fallen into disrepute — and to take over any 
already in existence ; 2 to establish advisory committees in connection 
with them ; to make regulations concerning the advancement of State 
loans in payment of fares to workers proceeding to employment pro- 
cured for them at a distance; and to assist the board generally in 
studies of the labor market. The labor exchanges are not intended 
to provide work other than the vacancies reported by employers, 
private or public. Nor is there attached to them machinery for the 
relief of distress occasioned by unemployment. By a later enact- 
ment, labor exchanges have become the principal administrative 
agencies for carrying out the provisions of the national insurance 
against unemployment regulations ; but originally, and still in the first 

1 Section 5 of the act defines as a labor exchange " any office or place used for the pur- 
pose of collecting and furnishing information, either by the keeping of registers or other- 
wise, respecting employers who desire to engage workpeople and workpeople who seek 
engagement or employment." 

2 The only important bureaus taken over were those of the "London Central (Unem- 
ployed) Body." 



6 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

instance, they are market places for labor and, as such, have only an 
indirect influence on the quantity and quality of the labor supply or 
the volume and nature of the demand for labor. 

The need for new machinery to accomplish the simple purpose of 
bringing together employers desiring workers and workers desiring 
employment had been demonstrated by many isolated investigations 
of the problem of unemployment, which indicated that frequently 
workers were standing idle around the gates of one work place when 
there was plenty of work, fitting their capacity, to be had at others, 
sometimes in the same city, -sometimes at a distance, The wasteful- 
ness of the delay in securing suitable workers or finding suitable jobs 
was equaled only by the prodigious waste of physical and moral 
strength from a planless and unnecessarily prolonged search for work 
and the resulting discouragement. 1 

It is hoped that as the labor exchanges increase the mobility 
of labor they will abolish the wasteful system by which a large 
firm is apt to keep its own reserve of labor in the shape of half- 
employed workpeople waiting at its gates instead of drawing from a 
common reserve in which the variations of employment in one branch 
can in some measure be compensated by the fluctuations in another. 2 

In addition to their immediate object of reducing these different 
forms of waste the labor exchanges were further expected to con- 
tribute to the knowledge of the labor market and, by providing a trade 
barometer indicating the general fluctuations of employment, to en- 
able the National Government and the local authorities to shape their 
labor policy in accordance with them and, if necessary, to take steps 
in time to prevent by artificial means abnormal unemployment and 
distress. It was hoped further that by providing records of employ- 
ment in different trades over longer periods, the labor exchanges 
would assist in the recognition with more precision of such general 
movements of expansion and reduction in the volume of employment 
offered in different industries as would justify or necessitate altera- 
tions in the facilities for industrial training. Such records would 
further indicate the trades especially liable to frequent or seasonal ces- 
sations of work and therefore especially fit subjects for unemployment 
insurance, and the " blind alley " employments which give occupation 
for a few years only and then throw those engaged in them on the 
labor market unequipped and sometimes unfitted for other work. 

There was thus, from the beginning, a wide social policy behind 
the comparatively simple machinery created for one definite prac- 
tical purpose. 

1 For a record of detailed inquiries into the effect of frequent periods of idleness on 
health and character, see " Unemployment — a Social Study," by Rowntree and Lasker. 
Macmillan, London, 1911. 

2 Board of Trade circular "Labor exchanges, 1913." 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 7 

INITIAL DIFFICULTIES. 

At first, it was not easy to make clear to the public the difference 
between the new labor exchanges and their functions on the one 
hand and the labor a bureaus " on the other. The latter, under the 
stimulus of a previous act of Parliament, 1 had been created in many 
cities by municipal " distress committees " — bodies consisting partly 
of elected members of city councils and partly of co-opted philan- 
thropists — at a time of exceptional trade depression. And although 
many of them were intended as labor exchanges in the true signifi- 
cance of the term, practically all were swamped sooner or later by the 
unclassifiable type of unskilled, shiftless, often physically handi- 
capped or old or intemperate or starving, " semi-employable " appli- 
cants for whom wages, as a rule, could be secured only in part as 
remuneration for services rendered and in part as charity. The 
provision of relief employment for this class had gradually grown 
out of a genuine endeavor to secure useful, though specially organized 
work, for persons temporarily idle in large numbers through an indus- 
trial crisis, who in all likelihood would return to their former occu- 
pations with the revival of trade. 

A number of municipal distress committees which carry on labor 
bureaus are still in existence. They have, in fact, been revived in 
some cases by the war with its new labor problems, but they are not in 
competition with the Board of Trade labor exchanges because they 
have become avowedly agencies for the organization of relief work 
or for recruiting municipal employees of the unskilled grades. 2 



1 Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905. 

2 The general development of the work of distress committees in England and Wales 
from 1909 to 1914 will be seen in the following table, compiled from the Seventeenth 
Abstract of Labor Statistics of the United Kingdom, 1915. 



Year 

ending 

Mar. 

31— 


Commit- 
tees in 
opera- 
tion. 


Applica- 
tions for 

work 
received . 


Appli- 
cants 
provided 
with 
work. 


Persons 
assisted 
to emi- 
grate.o 


Persons 
assisted 
to move.a 


Per cent 
of appli- 
cants 
under 
30 years 
of age. 


Per cent 
of appli- 
cants 
who 
were 
general 
or casual 
laborers. 


Total 
expendi- 
tures.?) 


1910.... 
1911.... 
1912.... 
1913.... 
1914.... 


116 
94 
74 
72 
59 


127, 066 
73, 491 
54,019 
43,381 
24,300 


58,603 
28,993 
23,011 
18,439 
9,803 


1,702 
2,775 
4, 283 
3,544 
1,950 


515 
260 
115 
94 
131 


26.4 
25.2 
25.0 
21.8 
20.3 


47.0 
48.3 
44.3 

45.7 
50.2 


§1,331,820 
893, 406 
806, 914 
765, 739 
549, 686 



a Including dependents. 

b Including cost of relief work provided, expendi cures in aid of emigration and removal, and 
cost of administration. 

It will be seen from these figures that the operations of the local distress committees 
have rapidly decreased in number, clientele, and expenditure, and that both the average 
age of applicants and the proportion of unskilled and casual laborers among them has 
increased ; that is, the " unemployable " element has become more predominant. Since, 
however, this movement coincided with one of improved trade, it is not possible to 
explain it altogether or even chiefly by the establishment of the national labor exchanges 
and their increasing use by the more vigorous and respectable classes of labor. 



8 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

It was only by persistent effort, sometimes in the face of a deter- 
mined politically inspired opposition, that the new labor exchanges 
were able to win for themselves the place in the industrial life of the 
nation which the legislature had intended for them. The greatest 
difficulty was experienced in persuading self-respecting and skilled 
artisans that the exchanges were at their service as much as that of 
unskilled and casual laborers. 

The system is industrial in the sense of having nothing to do with 
the poor law or the relief of distress. No questions are asked at an 
exchange except those which bear upon a workman's industrial 
capacity. No workman need be afraid that by going to an exchange 
he will appear to be asking for relief or to be proclaiming himself 
as " distressed." 1 

Employers at first applied to the exchanges only when in need of 
the lowest types of occasional help or when, owing to an unusual 
pressure in the demand, they had failed to fill, by their usual means 
of recruiting, vacancies for more qualified and experienced workers. 
It was only natural that under such circumstances there was noth- 
ing the officers of labor exchanges could do to dispel the impression 
that only the worst paid types cf workers had a chance of securing 
work through putting themselves on the register. In some cases, 
the very industry and keenness of these officers increased their handi- 
cap; for, when they did receive requests for a better type of labor, 
they were apt to be too anxious to please and so sent the best availa- 
ble applicants on their register instead of confessing that they had 
no labor to offer of the qualifications required. As a result, em- 
ployers frequently were disappointed, and, for long, justly regarded 
the exchange as rather a useless institution so far as the hiring of 
skilled labor was concerned. It has taken years to persuade em- 
ployers that they must use the exchanges all the year round and for 
all classes of labor — not at times of exceptional pressure when good 
men are scarce — in order to test fairly their power to procure suita- 
ble men more quickly and at less expense and trouble than by any 
other method. In some cities, this initial misunderstanding has not 
yet been quite removed. 

Another hindrance at the outset was that obviously there could 
not be enough experienced persons to staff the new bureaus, of which 
430 were opened during the first two years, with 1,066 subagencies. 
The new organization had to build up its own force and, since the 
necessary qualifications for success could not be foreseen with suffi- 
cient precision to make advisable the usual civil-service examina- 
tions, there had to be during the first few years a good deal of 

1 " Board of Trade Labor Exchanges," leaflet, 1914. 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 9 

replacement and gradual elimination of the unfit. 1 On his first 
round of visits to labor exchanges in the north and midlands, about 
a year after their establishment, the writer not infrequently found in 
adjoining towns as managers of exchanges of about equal importance 
men who had been school-teachers and trade-union officials, lawyers 
and charity workers, army officers, and clerks. A charge that these 
men had been appointed on patronage principles was easily refuted, 
an official inquiry showing that a majority of the new offices, created 
were actually held by men belonging to other parties than the one 
controlling the Government. It should be added that from the 
beginning the standard of efficiency and enthusiasm for their work 
shown by this new service as compared with that of many of the 
older departments was remarkable, and such success as there is to 
show now, after six years, is almost entirely to be attributed to this. 

ORGANIZATION. 

So much for some of the initial troubles. In January, 1916, there 
were 390 labor exchanges — some of those previously established hav- 
ing been amalgamated during the last two years — and, together 
with their branch offices and subagencies in industrial suburbs, small 
towns, and rural districts, they may be said to cover the whole of 
the United Kingdom. 2 The exchanges are grouped in eight terri- 
torial divisions, varying in area- with the industrial importance of 
the counties included in each, and controlled by divisional offices or 
clearing houses. These in their turn are coordinated with a central 
office or clearing house in London. The exchanges are connected by 
telephone, not only each with its divisional office, but also with each 
other, both within and without the division. 

The Labor Exchanges Act, 1909, is a short one, consisting of 
only six sections. The whole of the cost of administration is borne 
by the national exchequer; but, as is usual in British social legisla- 
tion, no financial provision is made in the act itself, but " any ex- 
pense incurred by the Board of Trade in carrying this act into effect, 
including the payment of traveling and other allowances to mem- 
bers of advisory committees and other expenses in connection there- 

1 This is admitted by the Board of Trade, which, in one of its circulars, says : " The 
system of exchanges which now covers the United Kingdom had to be organized and 
brought into working order by a staff inexperienced in a class of work in which experience 
had never before been really obtainable ; while in many cases the exchanges have been 
handicapped by temporary and unsuitable premises." 

2 The number of " agencies " varies from time to time ; there are usually several hun- 
dred of them in localities where some business in connection with unemployment insurance 
must be conducted, but where the possible amount of placement work would not justify 
the opening of a regular office. Often a single officer, by attending offices in different 
small towns on one or two days each week — preferably on market days — and continually 
traveling from one to another, is- able in a somewhat perfunctory, but, for practical pur- 
poses, sufficient, manner to cover a fairly wide territory. 



10 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

with, to such amount as may be sanctioned by the treasury, shall be 
defrayed out of moneys provided by Parliament." No fees what- 
ever are charged either to applicants for employment or to em- 
ployers notifying vacancies. 

In detail, the system is founded entirely upon the regulations 
made under the act by the Board of Trade, which have the force 
of laws, but must be laid before Parliament for confirmation, either 
before or after their actual enforcement. 1 For the better adminis- 
tration of the act a separate labor exchanges department was created 
by the Board of Trade. 

The staffing of labor exchanges, originally planned on a population 
basis, has been complicated by the administration of the unemploy- 
ment insurance regulations through the exchanges. For, whereas the 
placement work may be expected to correspond roughly to the popula- 
tion of each district, the chief unemployment insurance provisions of 
the act of 1911 apply only to certain trades whose volume varies in 
different localities and areas. Originally the exchanges were divided 
into six classes, serving areas with populations of over 100,000, from 
50,000 to 100,000, from 25,000 to 50,000, suburban districts, small 
industrial towns near larger centers, and small towns and districts 
with specialized trades. This plan has been modified by considera- 
tion of the number of insurable workmen in each locality, and the 
staff in the exchanges of the larger centers has in some cases been 
increased from 8 to over 20. In the civil-service estimates for 1913-14 
provision was made for a central office staff of 287, including 216 
clerks and lower grades ; a divisional exchange staff of 749, including 
589 clerks and lower grades ; a labor exchange staff of 2,494, including 
267 managers, 20 secretaries of juvenile advisory committees, and 
2,207 clerks and lower grades; a total staff of 3,530. This number, 
however, includes the staff needed for the administration of unem- 
ployment insurance which, owing to the close association of the 
two administrative functions, it is impossible to enumerate sepa- 
rately. 2 

The premises used at first were often unsatisfactory owing to the 
short notice with which the system was started. In many of the 

1 "Any general regulations made under this section shall have effect as if enacted in this 
act, but shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament as soon as may be after they are 
made ; and if either House of Parliament, within the next 40 days during the session of 
Parliament after any regulations have been so laid before that House, resolves that the 
regulations or any of them ought to be annulled, the regulations or those to which -the 
resolution applies shall, after the date of such resolution, be of no effect, without preju- 
dice to the validity of anything done in the meantime under the regulations, or to the 
making of any new regulations." (Labor Exchanges Act, 1909, sec. 2, subsec. (3).) - 

2 The director and general manager of the department receive a salary each of $5,000 to 
$6,000; two principal officers each $3,500 to $4,500; seven chiefs of sections, $2,500 to 
$3,750 ; nine assistant chiefs, according to seniority ; the principal woman officer, $2,000 
to $2,250 ; three traveling inspectors and one " labor adviser," $1,650 to $2,500. The 
total estimated outlay on labor exchanges for 1913-14 was less than $5,000,000 (£984,525). 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 11 

towns visited there were, during the first year or two, in use as labor 
exchanges old warehouses and stores, sometimes in uninviting side 
streets, sometimes dark and undignified in appearance, sometimes 
too small and not lending themselves to effective subdivision. This 
has gradually been unproved and a more or less definite standard 
has been applied not only to the premises themselves as regards 
location, size, heating, lighting, ventilation, subdivision, and general 
appearance, but also to the equipment. Only in a few cases has it 
been necessary for the Government to build; this has rightly been 
avoided as much as possible owing to the difficulty of foreseeing with 
any precision the probable growth of the work in different localities. 
The economy of this policy has shown itself especially since the enact- 
ment of the unemployment insurance law, and with the progress of 
ideas, since the beginning of the system, as regards the most effective 
arrangements. In every case separate registration offices — as far as 
possible with separate access from the street — are provided for men, 
women, boys, and girls. Often the men's department is further sub- 
divided into separate rooms for artisans and laborers or casuals, 
spacious waiting rooms being provided for the last named. 'In the 
larger exchanges separate provision is always made for registering 
insurable and uninsurable workmen, but not always in separate 
rooms. A separation of the skilled and more respectable from the 
unskilled and more casual workers is, in the larger exchanges, also 
made in the case of women workers. These different departments 
are practically always under the same roof except where, under a 
joint system of juvenile placement, the local education authority 
assumes responsibility for accommodating that part of the work of 
the exchange or where special exchanges have been established to 
deal with specific trades or grades, such as longshoremen, cotton 
porters, and the like. The specialization of exchanges on the lines 
of occupational divisions has, so far, remained exceptional. In the 
larger cities branches are sometimes established in the most densely 
populated industrial districts, and these often take their tone from 
the predominant local industry without being definitely created 
for its exclusive benefit. Women's departments are always staffed 
by women officers ; on the staffs of juvenile departments both men and 
women are found. Minute attention was paid, in connection with 
the draft of regulations, to the forms to be used for registration and 
statistical purposes. A departmental committee, appointed to con- 
sider this subject, reported in December, 1909, after a careful study 
of all available material, and practically all its recommendations 
were adopted. 



12 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

METHODS OF REGISTERING APPLICATIONS. 

The actual working of the system is not, perhaps, in essentials 
very different from that of others the world over; but it derives 
importance from the fact that it is the only one with a national 
application and that, as one of the most recent, it has absorbed the 
lessons of every other system with similar ends in view. 

Applicants for employment must register personally, except in the 
case of minors yet at school and of others living over 3 miles from 
the nearest exchange. These may send in written applications. 
Usually a clerk takes down the necessary particulars on a ruled and 
printed filing card, differing in color for men, women, boys, and 
girls. The principal questions, in the case of adults, refer to name, 
address, name of labor organization to which applicant belongs, if 
any, nature of work desired, age, whether willing to work in another 
district, when free to begin work, whether and where previously reg- 
istered, possible alternative trades, name and address of previous 
employers, nature and period of each previous employment. In the 
case of boys and girls, the questions asked also refer to name of last 
day school attended, date of leaving it, standard reached before 
leaving, intention of attending continuation classes — if so, whether 
day or evening and in what subjects — whether employed part time 
before leaving day school — if so, how long — whether willing to be 
apprenticed and, if so, whether able to pay premium. The back of 
the card, in each case, is reserved for a record of the vacancies to 
which the applicant is recommended; that is, date when sent for, 
name of employer, when sent to same, nature of A^acancy, date placed, 
etc., and columns for office-recording numbers and symbols. 

Clerks, artisans, and other educated and self-respecting applicants 
prefer to fill in their own forms instead of being examined orally. 
They are permitted to do so on a special form provided for that 
purpose, containing similar questions to those named, only more 
explicit. The information thus given must later be transferred by 
a clerk to a filing card. Whether examined orally or filling in forms 
of their own, applicants are not required necessarily to answer all 
the questions. But probably they stand a better chance if they do 
so and if they voluntarily add, in a space reserved for general re- 
marks, further information throwing light on their experience in 
and qualifications for the work desired. 

Applicants are encouraged to register at the exchange nearest 
their place of residence ; but there is nothing to prevent a man from 
registering at several exchanges. This, however, is of little benefit to 
him since vacancies are always filled by local applicants and only 
if no suitable applicant is available who is resident in the exchange 
area are those from other registration districts considered. Owing 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 13 

to the system of interlocal registration, the applicant in such cases 
usually hears of these vacancies just as quickly at the exchange in 
his own locality as he would hear of it by going to the exchange 
which has the vacancy. 

On registration, the applicant receives a registration post card 
(brown), stating his name, address, and trade, and leaving space 
for him to enter the name of an employer with whom he may find 
work and the date of starting such work. This card must be posted 
to the exchange immediately, whether the work has been found 
through the exchange or independently of it. 1 So long as he wishes 
to remain on the register and have his name brought before em- 
ployers, the applicant must present his card at the exchange at least 
once a week. Though in theory there is no good reason for it and 
though, as we shall see, 2 it is against the principle underlying the 
British labor exchange system that each vacancy should be filled 
as far as possible by the best available man of those on the register 
of applicants, it seems that in practice a man's chances are brighter 
if he calls daily and, in the case of unskilled laborers at least, bright- 
est if he camps at the exchange all day long. 3 This divergence of 
practice from theory is probably the only serious fault to be found 
with the administration of the British labor exchanges. Applicants 
residing outside the 3-mile radius are of course permitted to renew 
their registration by post. 

The register of those whose applications are valid, that is have 
been made or renewed within the last week, is called the " live reg- 
ister." The cards of those who do not renew their applications form 
the " dead register." When there is reason to believe that applica- 
tions have not been renewed owing to applicants' negligence rather 
than owing to their having found work for themselves, the cards 
often are placed on an " intermediate register." The old card is 
used again if, after an interval of a week or two, the applicant re- 
news his application; but his registration is statistically treated as 
a new one. 

There is nothing in the act or the regulations made under it to 
preclude a worker from registering whilei already employed. In 
theory, he would stand the same chance of securing work of the 
desired character as the workless applicant, provided he be equally 
suitable for a vacancy occurring in the trade. But in practice he is 

1 The address side has this imprint : " If you obtain work — either through the labor ex- 
change or otherwise — you must fill in this card and post it at once to the exchange. No 
stamp is needed. Until you obtain work, you must present this card at the labor exchange 
every in order to remain on the register." 

2 Page 17. 

8 In a report to the International Association on Unemployment (Bulletin, July-Septem- 
ber, 1913, p. 773), the director and general manager of the Board of Trade labor exchanges 
say : " If he wishes to remain on the register, he has to bring this card to the exchange 
each week, and, in addition, he is encouraged to call daily at the exchange to inquire as 
to vacancies." 



14 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

not encouraged to leave his employment for the sake of a change; 
and the fact of his lesser ability to reregister frequentty, and to call 
upon employers whose names are given him, makes him less eligible. 
Complaints were frequently made by employers during the first year 
or two of the exchanges' existence that the facilities offered to em- 
ployed workers to secure new positions had the tendency of making 
them continually dissatisfied, insubordinate, and shiftless. If this 
were true on an appreciable scale it would mean that previous to the 
establishment of the labor exchanges wage earners had insufficient 
opportunities for improving their position without giving up the 
jobs they held and thereby endangering their livelihood. But so 
far as it has been possible to ascertain the truth, it seems that the 
complaint of employers has been much exaggerated; that many of 
the persons engaged through the labor exchanges in the earlier stages 
of their history were apt to be of the less stable type, who would not 
have stayed for long in the same place anyhow, by whatever method 
hired. This criticism also overlooks the fact that if employees have 
been helped to secure new positions while still employed, employers 
also have been helped by the labor exchanges to replace them at the 
shortest notice, if necessary, from a distance. The astonishing fact, 
to an impartial observer, is that in spite of the greater mobility given 
to labor through the interlocal method of notification of vacancies 
and aids to traveling, further discussed on page 51, wages and con- 
ditions of labor have remained so dissimilar in near-by and even 
adjoining localities. The only possible explanation is that the Brit- 
ish worker values home ties and connections more highly than a slight 
rise in wages or mildly improved living conditions, and that the 
actual loyalty even of low-paid workers to their employers and their 
interest in the concerns in which they are employed are apt to be 
seriously underestimated by theoretic economists. 

Registration at a labor exchange, in case of unemployment, is 
practically compulsory in the case of workmen entitled to benefit 
under the obligatory unemployment insurance section of the Na- 
tional Insurance Act, 1911, since in his case a public test of his will- 
ingness to accept employment, if suitable work can be found for him, 
is the principal condition under which such benefit becomes payable. 
His insurance stamp book, while he is out of work, has to be deposited 
at the local office of the Unemployment Fund ; that is, the local labor 
exchange, and is returned to him as soon as he has secured work. 
In all other trades registration of unemployment is purely voluntary. 

METHODS OF REGISTERING VACANCIES. 

Notifications of vacancies may be made by personal call, by letter, 
telephone, or telegram. Employers also are supplied, if they desire, 
with post cards for free transmission on which to send in their re- 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 15 

quests for workpeople. These cards state name and address of the 
firm, description and number of the workpeople required, wages 
offered, and time and place for interviews of applicants. On the 
address side this note is printed : 

While full particulars as to requirements and wages offered will 
assist the exchange in selecting suitable applicants, the extent of the 
information given is within the discretion of the employer. 

An increasing number of employers, among them many of the 
largest concerns, have decided to engage all their labor — or some- 
times all but a few specially qualified skilled artisans whom they 
can better secure by other means — through the exchanges. To them 
thousands of blue enameled plates have been distributed for ex- 
hibition at their works' entrances to inform applicants for employ- 
ment that employees are hired only through the local labor exchange. 

Sometimes the employment officer of a large firm, especially if the 
latter be situated at some distance from the labor exchange for the 
district, is given the privilege of using a room set aside for him at 
the labor exchange at stated times of the week, where he can inter- 
view applicants for employment previously roughly selected by 
officers of the exchange for his further choice. 

METHODS OF FILLING VACANCIES. 

The filling of vacancies proceeds on the principle that the labor 
exchange is merely a mart. It assists employers by making a rough 
selection for them of applicants answering the description given in 
the request; but it merely submits applicants for the employer's con- 
sideration ; it does not assume any responsibility as to the ability or 
character of the person submitted. Similarly, the exchange does not 
undertake any responsibility to the worker concerning the nature 
or the wages and other conditions of the work offered. It simply 
hands on information as received and leaves it to employers and 
workpeople to decide for themselves whether they can come to 
terms. If a worker refuses a job on the ground that the wages 
offered are not high enough this does not disqualify him as regards 
his chance of future employment. If an employer refuses to employ 
;i man submitted to him because he belongs to a trade-union, then 
the exchange will endeavor to supply him from the list of applicants 
with the desired qualifications one who does not suffer from this 
fatal flaw. If the workman by insisting on too high a wage should 
lose good opportunities he will have only himself to blame. If the 
employer by putting a taboo on trade-unionists can secure only in- 
ferior labor it is his lookout. The exchange remains perfectly im- 
partial. 



16 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

When a vacancy has been reported, an officer of the exchange im- 
mediately goes through the card index of registered applicants 
waiting. for a job — the "live register" — to see whether any of them 
answer the description given. For the principal trades in his dis- 
trict he will have separate files so that no time will be lost by search 
in a large, miscellaneous card index. He may have only one suitable 
person on the register ; or of several applicants belonging to the trade 
one may be so superior to the others in what is known of his quali- 
fications that he is singled out for submission to the employer. A 
green identification card is given or sent him, and he is asked to 
present himself at the place and time mentioned by the employer in 
his request. This card is contained in a sealed envelope addressed 
to the employer and reads as follows : 

In reply to your request for I am sending , the bearer, who 

should present this card in a sealed green envelope addressed to you. If you 
engage bearer, please sign and return this card to me as soon as possible, even 
if the engagement is only temporary. If you do not engage bearer, please give 
this card back to him unsigned. 



Manager. 
N. B. — Until this card is returned the situation is considered open. 

In a corner of the envelope this " notice to applicants for employ- 
ment " is printed : 

If not engaged, you must bring this card back to the exchange in order to have 
an opportunity of being sent to another job which is open. 

The card is addressed to the manager of the exchange and may be 
mailed to him unstamped. 

In the majority of cases several applicants are sent, to give the 
employer a final choice, each supplied with a green identification 
card. Sometimes, labor critics complain, the number of persons sent 
is unnecessarily large. But it appears that the more efficient mana- 
gers try to reduce as far as possible the number of errands upon 
which men are sent- Investigation of this matter showed that there 
was a noticeable difference in this respect in the practice not only of 
different exchanges but also in that of one and the same exchange 
with regard to different classes of labor. An intelligent and ob- 
servant manager of an exchange usually knows those of his larger 
clients who prefer to have sent to them a more or less unselected group 
of workers to choose from for themselves and those who prefer the 
officers of the exchange to make a more careful selection for them. 
Also, in some trades the variation of skill and character, so far as suit- 
ability for employment in that trade is concerned, is not nearly so im- 
portant as in others, and it is less important for employers to make a 
careful personal choice, A hotel manager, for instance, will want to 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 17 

know all about the experience and character of a new cook before he 
engages him; a builder, on the other hand, may not need to be so 
particular in putting on a new mason, so long as he is duly qualified 
by trade-union membership, though both men are skilled workers. 

When it is remembered that the vacancies reported vary from 
positions for responsible employees, appointed sometimes for life, to 
jobs of an hour's duration for casual laborers, it will easily be 
seen how impossible it is to provide in rules and regulations for the 
exact procedure to be followed in the selection of applicants. In 
theory this is purely with respect to their suitability for the work 
offered on the motto "the best man for each job," and no regard is 
had to the length of time during which an applicant has been on the 
register, to questions of local residence, conjugal condition, financial 
stress, or any other extraneous consideration of that nature. After all, 
the purpose of a national system of labor exchanges is not merely to 
effect as many placements as possible, but to make placements satis- 
factory both to employers and employees. One of the chief arguments 
for a uniform system of placement on a large scale, such as the Brit- 
ish, is that it helps cut out the waste from industrial misfits arising 
when the labor market is too restricted to allow of an adequate choice 
and resulting in inefficiency and unemployment. 

But, as Prof. Pigou points out in a recent book, 1 the unification in 
a single system of the hiring of labor for a number of concerns in 
itself does not necessarily bring about increased placement of the 
fittest or gradual elimination of the unfit. 2 There never was any 
doubt that the Board of Trade scheme of labor exchanges was meant 
to be administered with strict adherence to the principle of preced- 
ence by fitness only. 3 But it appears that in practice a close inquiry 
into the respective merits and qualifications is not always made. 
Although this has been criticized elsewhere, it must of course be ad- 
mitted that such scrutiny is not always possible. This is especially 
true of unskilled workers and in cases where the number of applicants 
in any one trade is exceptionally large, as for instance in the build- 
ing trade during the slack months. In such cases, the general prac- 
tice seems to be for the manager either to send men of whom he 
happens to know that they have given satisfaction in other employ- 
ments to which they have previously been recommended, without 
taking the trouble of inquiring closely into the suitability of the 

1 " Wealth and Welfare," Macmillan, London, 1912, p. 318. 

2 In some of the European labor-bureau systems a rule has been provided explicitly stat- 
ing that vacancies must be filled in order of priority of application. 

3 " Employers have realized that their freedom of selection is in no way interfered with ; 
that the sole qualification taken into account in submitting men for vacancies notified by 
them is the applicant's industrial efficiency * * *." — C. F. Rey, general manager 
Board of Trade labor exchanges, in paper read at National Conference on Prevention cf 
Destitution, June, 1911. 

47784°— 16 2 



18 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

applicants whom he does not happen to know personally ; or to send 
a considerable number of applicants for the employer to make his 
own choice; or to send men who are in the waiting room or easily 
reached ; or to send persons who have been put on the register most 
recently and who, by virtue of having maintained their jobs longer 
than other applicants, may be supposed to have superior qualifica- 
tions. Sometimes, however, it seems that the opposite of the last- 
named custom is applied, contrary to instructions and the funda- 
mental aim of the exchanges, namely, that managers send applicants 
who have been longest on the live register. This may, in rare cases, 
be owing to pressure on the part of trade-union secretaries, who, of 
course, like to see preference given to those of their members who are 
most difficult to place; or, more frequently, to the natural desire on 
the part of the officer to get rid of applicants who have been haunting 
the office for a long time. Often employers themselves hinder a 
thorough selection of suitable persons from the live register of appli- 
cants by an unreasonable urgency in their demand which forces the 
manager to send the first " best person for the job " vaguely answering 
the requirements mentioned whom he can get hold of in the time stated. 
Moreover, since the exchange has no means of testing the statements 
made either by applicants for work or by employers and merely hands 
on the information given it, it follows that in practice, even with the 
best intention, the idea of " the best man for each job " can be applied 
only very roughly and intermittently. It is well that this idea 
should not be lost sight of as a guiding principle ; but the real selec- 
tion must of necessity rest with the employer. 

When the local current or live register does not contain anyone 
answering the requirements of an employer it is the duty of the man- 
ager to do two things : First, to advertise the vacancy on a bulletin 
board, usually placed in the window of the exchange premises; and 
second, to communicate it to the divisional office for the area in which 
the exchange is situated both by telephone and by written forms 
filled up and forwarded at least once each day. The divisional office, 
unless able to fill the vacancy immediately from its list of applicants 
on the live registers of the different exchanges in the division, 1 cir- 
culates its notification, along with that of other unfilled vacancies 
in the division notified from the various exchanges in it, either 
among the exchanges which are likely to have on their live regis- 
ters applicants of the class required or among all the exchanges of 
the division. After a given time, should it fail to fill the vacancy 
within the division, the divisional office takes further action. It either 

1 A rare occurrence. Normally, applications for work will only be reported to the divi- 
sional office if there is reason to believe that a demand for a person of applicant's quali- 
fications is not likely soon to arise locally while suitable vacancies are likely to be open in 
other exchange areas in the division. 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 19 

circulates its notification among other divisional clearing houses 
which are likely to have applicants of the class required or reports 
it to the central office in London, which in turn circulates the noti- 
fication among all the divisions. In this way the circle within which 
a request of an employer for workers is made known is a gradually 
widening one. The same, with limitations, is true of requests for 
employment. Unless they can be satisfied locally — that is, unless 
there is a reasonable likelihood of finding a suitable local opening in 
the near future — they assume the character of a search over an area of 
about one-eighth of the United Kingdom, and after that of a country- 
wide inquiry. It must not be imagined, however, that as a result of 
this system every British workingman regards the whole country as 
a possible field for his wage-earning activity. While undoubtedly, as 
will be seen on page 51, the creation of a national pooling of possible 
openings has been of great benefit to him, his natural conservatism 
and love of home have prevented anything in the nature of a gen- 
eral game of " pussy wants a corner." 

PROCEDURE IN CASE OF LABOR DISPUTES. 

The action of the labor exchanges is governed by different rules 
in cases where a strike or lockout is actually in progress and in cases 
where a trade dispute is said by one side or the other, or by both, to 
be in existence which, however, has not led to a cessation of work. 
Their duty is laid down in subsection (2) of section 2 of the act: 

The regulations shall provide that no person shall suffer any dis- 
qualification or be otherwise prejudiced on account of refusing to 
accept employment found for him through a labor exchange where 
the ground of refusal is that a trade dispute which affects his trade 
exists, or that the wages offered are lower than those current in the 
trade in the district where the employment is found. 

"With regard to strikes and lockouts, the general regulations issued 
by the Board of Trade in 1910 interpret this clause as follows : 

III. (1) Any association of employers or workmen may file at a 
labor exchange a statement with regard to the existence of a strike or 
lockout affecting their trade in the district. Any such statement 
shall * * * be signed by a person authorized by the association 
for the purpose. Such statement shall be confidential except as here- 
under provided and shall only be in force for seven days from the 
date of filing but may be renewed within that period for a like period, 
and so on from time to time. 

(2) If any employer who appears to be affected by a statement so 
filed notifies to a labor exchange a vacancy or vacancies for workmen 
of the class affected, the officer in charge shall inform him of the state- 
ment that has been filed and give him an opportunity of making a 
written statement thereon. The officer in charge in notifying any 
such vacancies to any applicant for employment shall also inform 
him of the statements that have been received. 



20 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

In the application of this ruling no serious difficulties have arisen. 
Usually there is no question as to the accuracy of a statement filed 
either by a trade-union or an employers' association that a strike or 
lockout exists. If, however, an employer, on being informed by the 
exchange of the report by a trade-union of a strike affecting his plant, 
denies the existence of such a strike and insists on having his request 
for workers put on the bulletin board of the exchange, the manager 
has to comply with his request. But on receiving applications for 
such vacancies he must inform the applicant that such and such a 
trade-union has reported the existence of a strike affecting that firm, 
and that the firm itself denies it. He will also produce the respective 
documents themselves if requested to show them. He is expressly 
forbidden either to discourage or encourage an applicant to take such 
a job; and there have been very few complaints that this rule has 
been violated. 1 

Another regulation provides that the special privileges as to ad- 
vance of traveling fares, which is further referred to on page 51, 
shall not be given where the firm concerned is affected by a strike 
which has been reported to the exchange by a trade-union. 

Of trade disputes which have not actually led to a strike or lock- 
out the labor exchange obviously has no precise knowledge. Such 
disputes may be said to exist by a trade-union secretary but be denied 
by the majority of workers in the plant concerned, and all varieties 
between a mild disagreement and a serious threat to quit work are 
possible. Yet, in order to prevent the acceptance of positions by 
persons ignorant of existing trade agreements and the penalizing of 
persons refusing to accept a position offered them because of an 
alleged trade dispute, two rules have been framed which amply safe- 
guard the workers without in any way embarrassing employers will- 
ing to keep faith with their employees. One of them provides for 
the filing at the labor exchange for public inspection of trade agree- 
ments or rules of public authorities as employers bearing upon wages 
and conditions of work. 2 By this means an applicant can make sure 
before applying for a vacancy posted up at the labor exchange or 
communicated to him by it that the wages and conditions offered are 
in accordance with existing trade-union agreements, or, in the case 
of a public contract, with the rules adopted by the authorhVy. The 
second regulation provides that no applicant who refuses to apply 
for a vacancy communicated to him by the exchange for the reason 

iThe actual attitude of labor exchanges on the occasion of strikes is further discussed 
on p. 48. 

2 General Regulations, 1910, IV (2) : "Copies or summaries of any agreements mutually 
arranged between associations of employers and workmen for the regulation of wages or 
other conditions of labor in any trade may, with the consent of the various parties to such 
agreements, be filed at a labor exchange, and any published rules made by public authori- 
ties with' regard to like matters may also be filed. Documents so filed shall be open to 
inspection on application," 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 21 

just mentioned, or because he considers the wages offered lower than 
those current in the trade and district, shall on that account be dis- 
qualified for being considered in connection with other openings. 1 
It is only natural that, in spite of these various provisions, the charge 
should occasionally be made that labor exchanges are used for the 
importation of "scabs," but an endeavor to locate actual instances 
of such practice, made by the writer two years ago, yielded only one 
case, in which the guilty officer had been promptly removed. 

GENERAL RESULTS. 

In consequence of the war, which has deprived the department of 
many of its most important officers and burdened others with new 
duties, only a summary of statistical information is available for 
the work of the exchanges in the years 1914 and 1915. 2 These figures 
must be used with caution, and particular care should be taken not to 
infer from them more than they are capable of proving. They do 
not, for instance, register the total amount of unemployment; nor 
is it known whether they correctly reflect movements of employment 
generally. Since the use made of labor exchanges by workers of 
the same trade in different localities and by workers of different 
trades in the same locality varies considerably, it is not possible with- 
out using also other available material to judge from labor-exchange 
statistics as to the relative amount of unemployment in different 
trades, among skilled and unskilled, in different areas, and at differ- 
ent times. These criticisms, however, apply with less force probably 
to the branch exchanges than to any labor exchanges not so thor- 
oughly organized into a national system. So far, however valuable 
in themselves for various purposes, they are only contributory to a 
knowledge of the labor market generally. If, for instance, we learn 
that the labor exchanges in 1915 received 3,186,137 applications for 
work, representing 2,315,816 individuals, 3 we must remember that in 
these totals are included men hired for a few hours to shovel snow 
as well as men with a high and rare degree of skill for whom perma- 
nent appointments have been found. 4 

1 General Regulations, 1910, IV (3) : "No person shall suffer any disqualification or be 
otherwise prejudiced on account of refusing to accept employment found for him through 
a labor exchange where the ground of refusal is that a trade dispute which affects his 
trade exists or that the wages offered are lower than those current in the trade in the 
district where the employment is found." 

2 See Board of Trade Labor Gazette for February, 1915, and February, 1916. 

3 Of this number, 19,013 were on the casual register only ; but we do not know the pro- 
portion of those on the general register whose placement was known to be temporary only. 

4 There came to the notice of the writer the case of an overzealous exchange official 
who, having employed a woman in the exchange's waiting room for half an hour mending 
his coat, considered it his duty carefully to record the transaction among vacancies re- 
ported and filled. It is not to be inferred, however, that any appreciable part of the 
published statistics have been arrived at in similar ways. 



22 



BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 



The number of vacancies reported in 1915, namely, 1,797,646, was 
only three-fifths of the number of applications registered; so that 
apparently two-fifths of the number of applications for work booked 
represent a surplus of labor offer. But here again rash deductions 
should be avoided. Of the vacancies reported one-quarter re- 
mained unfilled. Besides, we do not know how large a proportion of 
the registered applications lapsed because the individual found 
work elsewhere or because the employer who had reported a vacancy 
omitted to send the green post card informing the exchange of his 
acceptance of the applicant sent. We are told that the number of 
registrations given includes reregistrations of the same individuals; 
but we do not know how large a proportion is thus accounted for. 

However this may be, the proportion of applications registered 
or even of the number of individual applicants of the number of 
vacancies reported or filled would not in any case provide us with 
a criterion of the efficiency of the system. For that proportion de- 
pends primarily on the state of trade. For a test of the practical 
results, two things are worth noting: First, the continued increase 
from the start in the number of applicants registered and of 
vacancies reported during a period of exceptionally good trade; 
second, the continued improvement in the proportion of applicants 
for whom work was found. The following table will show the 
remarkable progress in both these directions since the starting of 
the system: 1 

Table 1.— OPERATIONS OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 1911 TO 1915. 



[Source: Seventeenth Abstract of Labor Statistics of the United Kingdom and Board of Trade Labor 

Gazette for February, 1916.] 


Year. 


Ex- 
changes 
open at 
end of 
year. 


Applica- 
tions 
registered. 


Individual 
applicants. 


Vacancies 
reported. 


Individ- 
uals given 
work. 


Vacancies 
filled. 


Per cent 
of appli- 
cants 
given 
work. 


Per cent 
of va- 
cancies 
filled. 


1911 

1912 

1913 

1914 

1915 


261 
413 
422 
401 
390 


2,040,447 
2,465,304 
2,965,893 
3,442,452 
3, 186, 137 


1,513,369 
1,643,587 
1,871,671 
2,164,023 
2,326,803 


788,609 
1,062,574 
1,222,82a 
1,479,024 
1,797,646 


469, 210 
573, 709 
652,306 
814,071 
1,058,336 


621,410 

828, 230 

921, 853 

1,116,909 

1,308,137 


31.0 
34.9 
34.9 
37.6 
45.5 


78.8 
77.9 
75.4 
75.5 
72.8 



Compared with the figures for 1913, the number of vacancies re- 
ported had increased by 21 per cent in 1914 and by 47 per cent in 
1915 ; the number of registrations, by 16.1 per cent in 1914 and by 7.4 
per cent in 1915 ; the number of individual applicants registered, by 
15.6 per cent in 1914 and by 24.3 per cent in 1915; the number of 

1 For tables giving the trades of men, women, boys, and girls registered as applicants 
for work and who found work during 1911, 1912, and 1913, see Seventeenth Abstract of 
Labor Statistics, Board of Trade, Cd. 7733, 1915. The respective figures for 1914 and 
1915 are not yet published. 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 



23 



vacancies filled, by 21.2 per cent in 1914 and by 41.9 per cent in 1915 ; 
and the number of individuals given work, by 24.8 per cent in 1914 
and by 62.2 per cent in 1915. 

Table 2 shows separately for men, women, boys, and girls that the 
tendency for the proportion of individual applicants registered who 
were given workjias been one of steady improvement. 

Table 2.— PER CENT OF INDIVIDUALS REGISTERED FOR WHOM WORK WAS FOUND, 

1911 TO 1915. . 

[Source: Seventeenth Abstract of Labor Statistics of the United Kingdom and Board of Trade Labor 

Gazette for February, 1916.] 




1911 


1912 


1913 


1914 


1915 


27.5 
31.7 
46.7 
42.9 


32.8 
32.9 

48.2 
43.4 


30.8 
37.9 
54.1 
47.1 


36.7 
33.6 
54.2 
41.3 


53.8 
33.3 
59.9 
46.2 


31.0 


34.9 


34.9 


37.6 


45.5 



It* will be seen that progress was not regular all along the line. 
The decreased proportion of the women and girls for whom work 
was found in 1914 as compared with 1913 is explained by the Board 
of Trade as due to the large number of registrations during the last 
half of the year, principally in the clothing and textile trades and 
in domestic service, caused undoubtedly by the war. But in spite of 
this depression there was an absolute increase in the number for 
whom work was found, namely, 221,465 women and girls in 1914 as 
compared with 187,630 in 1913. The increase in the proportion of 
girls for whom work was found in 1915 was due, firstly, to the de- 
mand for women on shell making and filling, making of small-arm 
ammunition, and on other Government work, and, secondly, the de- 
mand for women to replace enlisted men in the textile industry, con- 
veyance of goods, etc., agriculture, and commercial, clerical, Govern- 
ment, and professional occupations. 

A more striking picture of the effect of the war on the work of 
the labor exchanges is given by the following table in which the num- 
ber of adult applicants for work remaining on the register at the 
end of each month and the daily average of vacancies filled is com- 
pared for the last three years. 



24 



BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 



Table 3. — NUMBER OF WORKERS ON THE REGISTER AND DAILY AVERAGE 
OF VACANCIES FILLED— 1915 COMPARED WITH 1914 AND 1913. 

[Source: Seventeenth Abstract of Labor Statistics of the United Kingdom, and Board of Trade Labor 

Gazette for February, 1916.] 

On register at end of period. 









Per cent of in- 








Per cent of increase 








crease (+) or de- 








( + ) o 


• decrease 


Period 
ending— 


Men. 


Women. 


crease (— ) com- 
pared with 1914. 


Period 
ending — 


Men. 


Women. 


( — ) compared 
with 1913. 




Men. 


Women. 


Men. 


Women. 


1915. 










1914. 










Feb. 12 


55, 723 


31,653 


-51.9 


+ 79.3 


Feb. 13 


115, 767 


17,650 


- 5.3 


+ 3.3 


Mar. 12 


43,847 


30, 326 


-53.8 


+ 69.7 


Mar. 13 


94,931 


17,871 


+ 5.6 


+ 12.2 


Apr. 16 
May 14 


40,394 


41, 363 


-50.0 


+ 162. 1 


Apr. 17 
May 15 


80, 711 


15, 783 


+ 14.2 


- 9.9 


34, 487 


38,989 


-54.9 


+ 95.5 


76,520 


19,944 


+ 20.9 


+ 43. 


June 11 


37,03$ 


43, 165 


-54.0 


+ 116. 1 


June 12 


80, 471 


19, 970 


+ 20.3 


+ 18.8 


July 16 


40,539 


46,623 


-52.4 


+172.4 


July 17 


85,185 


17, 115 


+ 22.6 


+ 21.5 


Aug. 13 


39, 086 


44,924 


-73.3 


+ 55.2 


Aug. 14 


146,531 


28, 943 


+ 127.9 


+ 95.5 


Sept, 10 


35, 245 


45,331 


-76.2 


+ 20.6 


Sept. 11 


148,391 


37,599 


+ 107.0 


+130.6 


Oct. 15 


38, 246 


53, 716 


-62.9 


+ 48.7 


Oct. 16 


103, 154 


36,117 


+ 24.3 


+ 107. 7 


Nov. 12 


34,960 


67,960 


-57.6 


+ 94.3 


Nov. 13 


82,429 


34,974 


- 11.7 


+ 113.0 


Dec. 10 


33, 767 


64,382 


-49.8 


+117.5 


Dec. 11 


67,265 


29,604 


- 32.3 


+107. 1 


1916. 










1915. 










Jan. 14 


39,522 


71,429 


-41.2 


+131.4 


Jan. 15 
Aver- 


67, 215 


30,864 


- 47.9 


+ 88.5 


Aver- 


















age.. 


39,405 


48, 322 


-58.8 


+ 89.2 


age.. 


95, 714 


25,536 


+ 12.3 


+ 60.5 



Daily average of vacancies filled during period. 









Per cent of in- 








Per cent of increase 








crease (+) or de- 








( + ) or decrease 








crease 


'— ) corn- 








(-) 


compared 


Period 
ending— 


Men. 


Women. 


pared with 1914. 


Period 
ending— 


Men. 


Women. 


with 1913. 




Men. 


Women. 


Men. 


Women. 


1915. 










1914. 










Feb. 12 


2,640 


852 


+50.7 


+22.6 


Feb. 13 


1,752 


695 


+18.3 


+21.5 


Mar. 12 


2,536 


928 


+37.5 


+36.7 


Mar. 13 


1,844 


679 


+ 6.9 


+ 7.8 


Apr. 16 
May 14 


2,559 


993 


+31.2 


+35. 8 


Apr. 17 
May 15 


1,950 


731 


+ 5.6 


+ 14.4 


2,420 


1,090 


+18.9 


+39.4 


2,035 


782 


+17.3 


+24.3 


June 11 


2,357 


1,175 


+28.4 


+46.5 


June 12 


1,835 


802 


- 7.0 


+ 6.9 


July 16 


2,343 


1,248 


+29.9 


+40.9 


July 17 


1,804 


886 


- 2.9 


+ 17.8 


Aug. 13 


2,129 


1,215 


-10.0 


+83.0 


Aug. 14 


2,366 


664 


+38.3 


+ 1.8 


Sept. 10 


2,303 


1,248 


-14.1 


+99.0 


Sept. 11 


2,681 


627 


+61.5 


+ 1.1 


Oct. 15 


2,251 


1,283 


-15.2 


+55.7 


Oct. 16 


2,656 


824 


+60.0 


+24.3 


Nov. 12 


2,264 


1,388 


-13.5 


+76. 4 


Nov. 13 


2,617 


787 


+55.1 


+17.8 


Dec. 10 


1,984 


1,493 


-22.2 


+83.0 


Dec. 11 


2,551 


816 


+47.9 


+27.7 


1916. 










1915. 


' 








Jan. 14 


11,887 


11,385 


-16.8 


+80.3 


Jan. 15 
Aver- 


i 2, 269 


1768 


+51.5 


+29.9 


Aver- 


















age.. 


12,304 


i 1, 194 


+ 4.9 


+57.3 


age.. 


i 2, 196 


i 759 


+28. 1 


+ 16.6 



i Not including post office temporary Christmas work. 

In, explanation of these figures, the Board of Trade remarks: 

During a normal year the numbers on the register would show the 
seasonal fluctuations of trade, with a high unemployment figure 
at the beginning of the year, a decline to mid- July, and an increasing 
figure to the end of the year. The seasonal fluctuation is, however, 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 25 

masked by the unemployment following the outbreak of war and 
the increased industrial activity in the later months of the year. 1 

The decrease in the number of men on the register at the end of 
the monthly period, compared with the number on the register a 
year before, starts with October, 1914, and goes right through 1915. 
It is due, of course, to enlistment and to a demand for labor, growing 
throughout this period, in armament work and on every kind of 
naval and military contract work. To judge from the daily averages 
of vacancies filled, this movement of men ceased about July, 1915, 
when, apparently, the shortage of labor as judged by the number of 
vacancies filled became serious. 

On the other hand, there was a continuous steady increase in the 
number of women registering. By the end of the year this increase 
had amounted to 131.4 per cent, compared with the figure at the 
commencement. This corresponds to the growth in the demand for 
the services of women in munitions work and to replace men enlisted 
from other occupations. Many of the women who* registered were 
volunteers offering themselves from patriotic reasons for employment 
for which they frequently could not be regarded as suitable, 2 

It is quite impossible, of course, in the absence of statistics of 
placements effected without the aid of public labor exchanges, to reach 
a conclusion on the relation of the exchanges' operations to the total 
labor turnover. The period covered by their history so far, with 
the exception of two or three months after the outbreak of the war, 
has been one of relatively good trade, and it remains to be seen 
whether employers have sufficiently got into the habit of calling 
up the exchange when in need of workers to continue this practice 
when other methods of securing labor by reason of slackening trade 
activity become again more fruitful. There can be no doubt that in 
future during a trade depression the number of applications regis- 
tered by the exchanges will enormously increase. 

EFFECT OF UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ON WORK OF LABOR 

EXCHANGES. 

It is not improbable that the provision against unemplo3 T ment 
made by so many British trade-unions acted against rather than 
in favor of a rapid increase in the use of the State labor exchanges 
by organized workers. 3 For it must be assumed that the unions 
paying benefits to their members when out of work have always 

1 Board of Trade Labor Gazette for February, 1915, p. 43. 

2 Idem, p. 48. 

3 " The latest complete figures relate to 1908, when returns were received from unions 
with a total membership of 2,359,867, or more than 99 per cent of the total membership 
of all unions at the end of that year. Out of this number, 1,473,593 were insured against 
unemployment, and an additional 1.524,091 were entitled, in cases of unemployment, to 
traveling benefit, or to total or partial remission of contributions, or to occasional allow- 
ances." — Labor Yearbook, London, 1916. 



26 BULLETIN OP THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

been active in using every possible means of placing them. Indeed, 
personal inquiry among the officers of such unions showed that while 
generally they appreciated the advantages of a national system of 
registration, they did not usually find that this system had much 
to offer in practice to their own members or helped to reduce their 
payments in unemployment benefits, because they already had 
created for themselves fairly successful methods of rapidly obtaining 
and distributing to their members information on all vacancies in 
their trade as they arose. 

On the other hand, it will be expected, and in fact there can be no 
doubt, that State insurance against unemployment, which uses the 
labor-exchange system to test the fact of unemployment before pay- 
ment of benefit, must increase the volume of transactions of the 
exchange. The unemployed insured workmen are obliged to reg- 
ister, and the fact of their registering there induces employers to 
report their vacancies. As we have seen, there has been a constant 
increase in the number of applications registered since the exchanges 
were opened, and although there was no noticeable jump in this in- 
crease in 1912-13, when such benefits became first payable, 1 it is 
probable that the effect of the use of the exchanges in connection 
with the national insurance scheme was gradual but considerable. 
It not only compelled large numbers of workers to register at the 
labor exchanges their desire to secure work, but since many of these 
belonged to the superior classes of organized labor their example in 
using the exchanges stimulated a larger use of them also on the part 
of noninsured workers. 

It is not intended here to enter a full discussion of the national 
provision against unemployment in the United Kingdom made by 
the National Insurance Act of 1911. But a few particulars are neces- 
sary to show the importance of its effect on the use of the labor 
exchanges. Part II of that act contained two separate measures : 

First, to encourage more trade-unions to give out-of-work pay to 
unemployed members, a subvention not exceeding one-sixth of the 
amount so paid is contributed by the State to unions of workmen 
not in the compulsorily insured trades mentioned below, subject to 
approval by the Board of Trade, which also has wide powers in 
making regulations. This State grant, a method more commonly 
employed in Great Britain and in other European countries than 
it is in the United States for the purpose of achieving national 
objects by means of financial encouragement, immediately enabled 
a number of important unions to establish unemployment benefits, 
though previously they had not seen fit to do so; it also gave to 
other unions which already paid such benefits a powerful incentive 
to make them more adequate than they had been before. 

1 The act came into force in July, 1912. 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 27 

Soon after the outbreak of the present war, as a result of a deputa- 
tion to the Prime Minister from the joint board of the Trade Union 
Congress, the General Federation of Trade Unions, and the Labor 
Party on August 27, 1914, which painted a dark picture of the heavy 
drains on the unemployment funds of the unions at that time and 
the rapid exhaustion which was then feared, the Government grants 
were substantially increased for the purpose of safeguarding the 
solvency of the funds. Provided the union complied with certain 
demands and that it could prove from its books the existence of 
abnormal unemployment among its members, an emergency grant 
(in addition to the one-sixth already named) of either one-sixth or 
one-third of the expenditure of the union on unemployment benefit 
was allowed. 1 

The second and more important form of unemployment insurance 
under the act of 1911 is the compulsory part, which is applied to all 
manual workers in building, works of construction, shipbuilding, 
engineering, iron founding, construction of vehicles, and sawmilling. 
The insured workers, numbering about 2,500,000, including some 
10,000 women, or about one-sixth of all wage earners in the United 
Kingdom, contribute 2 \ pence (5 cents) weekly, deducted from their 
wages by the employer, who pays an equal amount and is respon- 
sible to the Government for the whole payment by means of a stamp 
affixed to a card held by the employee. The State contributes a 
sum equal to one-third the amount contributed by both employees 
and workers and all the cost of administration. Out of these contri- 
butions the worker is entitled to a benefit of Is. 2d. (28.4 cents) per 
day, or 7s. ($1.70) per week during the period of his inability to 
secure work. Unions of workmen in insured trades are encouraged 
to pay unemplojrment benefits of 7s ($1.70) per week by payments to 
them of subventions not exceeding one-sixth of such excess from 
State funds. 

It is by the payment of benefits through the labor exchange that 
this institution is made the corner stone of the whole edifice of this 
part of the unemployment-insurance scheme, for no benefit is pay- 
able unless proof exists that the claimant is desirous of working if 
work of a suitable character can be found for him. Obviously, this 
means an obligatory use of the labor exchange, for it is the only pos- 
sible test of willingness to work that can be sanctioned by the State. 
The problem involved is not an easy one. A workman is entitled to 

1 This scheme came into operation in October, 1914. At the end of March, 1915, appli- 
cations for emergency grants, amounting to $373,533, had been made to 182 labor associa- 
tions with a membership of 283,778. Out of this sum, $315,214 went to the cotton indus- 
try alone, the only staple industry which, through the dislocation of imports, had been 
substantially injured by the war. Of course, these sums are very small compared with the 
actual loss of wages — especially when that resulting from working short time is also 
counted — and the unions complain of the Government's parsimony. 



28 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

benefit if he is willing to accept a " suitable " situation offered under 
" reasonable " conditions. But the words " suitable " and " reason- 
able " are open to many interpretations. As a rule, the situation 
must be in the applicant's own trade and must be at wages and under 
conditions at least equally as advantageous as those usually prevailing 
in the trade and locality where the work is done. The worker would 
be entitled to refuse work offered in a locality where wages are much 
lower than in his own, or if its acceptance were to necessitate his re- 
moval and that of his family, without offering any guaranty of 
employment over a sufficient period to make it worth while. It is 
regarded as a reasonable refusal if the applicant declines an offer of 
work elsewhere at a wage which would be insufficient to maintain 
him in that locality and his family apart from him where it is then 
living. 1 

Since the number of applicants registered, vacancies notified, and 
vacancies filled obviously depends much more on the state of trade 
in different industries and in different years than on the efficiency 
of the labor exchanges or the respective popularity of their services 
with different classes of labor, no detailed figures are here given to 
show how the insured trades compare in these respects with the 
uninsured ones. There is, however, one point in the published sta- 
tistics which is especially worth noting, namely, that the proportion 
of vacancies filled is rather higher in the insured than in the unin- 
sured groups of trades. Table 4 gives the results of the operations 
of labor exchanges, compared for insured and uninsured workers of 
both sexes and all ages: 

1 It is obviously very difficult for the individual workman, under all circumstances, to 
know whether he is entitled to benefit or not ; whether a refusal to accept a position 
offered bim would be valid or not. Although fairly explicit regulations have been drawn 
up for tbe guidance of local officers of exchanges, the claimant has a right of appeal, free 
of cost, to a local court of referees, consisting of one representative each of employers 
and of wage earners and a chairman appointed by tbe Board of Trade. Tbis court is in 
the nature of an informal committee, and meets at hours convenient for workpeople to 
attend. Its decisions are practically always accepted ; but a further appeal, where, for 
instance, a trade-union desires a ruling on a matter of principle, is permissible to a per- 
manently appointed umpire, who is a man of high standing in the legal profession. 

Many of tbe doubtful cases turn on questions incidental to labor disputes. For instance, 
in connection with strikes, considerable numbers of wage earners are often thrown out of 
work who are in no way involved in the dispute. Again, there are many cases where a 
dispute arises as to whether a person, though unable to secure work at his own trade, 
should, if gainfully employed at another, yet be eligible for benefit. An amending act of 
1914, among other things, lays down the rule that a workman is not disqualified from 
receiving unemployment benefit by reason of his being employed at some work which he 
ordinarily followed outside the regular working hours of his trade. 



THE BEITISH SYSTEM OE LABOE EXCHANGES. 



29 



Table 4.— REGISTRATIONS, AND VACANCIES REPORTED AND FILLED, 1913, 1914, AND 

1915. 

[ Source : Seventeenth Abstract of Labor Statistics of the United Kingdom and Board 
of Trade Labor Gazette for February, 191fi.] 



Trade groups and years. 


Registra- 
tions. 


Vacancies 
reported. 


Vacancies 
filled. 


Per cent 
of vacan- 
cies filled. 


Insured trades: 

1913 


1, 448, 535 

1, 636, 463 

963,832 

1,517,358 
1,805,989 
2, 222, 305 


431, 085 
537, 185 
645, 569 

791, 743 

941, 839 

1,152,077 


344,070 
425, 404 
481,212 

577,783 
691, 505 
826,925 


79 9 


1914. ..". 


79 2 


1915 


74.5 


Uninsured trades: 

1913 


73 


1914 


73 4 


1915 


71 8 







Isolating the proportion of vacancies filled for adults only 1 and 
stating them separately for different groups of trades, we get the 
following results: 

Table 5.— PER CENT OF VACANCIES FOR MEN AND WOMEN IN INSURED AND UNIN- 
SURED TRADES WHICH HAVE BEEN FILLED, 1912, 1913, AND 1914. 

[Source: Board of Trade Labor Gazette, for February, 1914, and February, 1915.] 



Groups of trades. 


1912 


1913 


1914 


INSURED TRADES. 

Building and works of construction 


81.8 
83.6 

78.5 
90.2 
72.3 
80.7 
75.7 
59.2 
71.0 
81.1 


80.5 
7&16 

82.3 

88.2 
70.9 
81.1 
72.7 
62.2 
69.4 
77.4 


79 8 


Engineering, shipbuildins:, construction of vehicles, saw-milling, and 
related insured occupations 


78 7 


UNINSURED TRADES. 

Convevance of men, goods, and messages 


80 7 




86.9 
70 3 


Domestic service 


Food, tobacco, drink, and lodging 


79 9 


Textiles 


69 7 


Dress 


65 5 


Commercial 


74 2 


All other trades 


74 3 






Total 


SO.O 


77. S 


76 9 







These figures show that, while in both the groups of insured trades 
there has been a slight decrease each year in the proportion of 
vacancies filled, yet that proportion was each year higher than the 
average proportion for both insured and uninsured trades. This 
difference is too slight to have any great significance ; but it tends to 
show that the obligatory registration of unemployment, as neces- 
sitated by unemployment insurance, not only increases the use of the 
exchanges by those seeking employment in the respective trades but 
also makes it possible to fill a larger proportion of the vacancies 
reported by the employers. It has been suggested that the engage- 
ment of labor through the public labor exchanges might be made 

1 The term " adults " is applied to persons 17 years of age and over, and the term 
" juveniles," for whom separate statistics are collected through the juvenile branches of 
labor exchanges, to persons under 17 years of age. 



30 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

compulsory in the case of the insured trades. It is difficult to see any 
strong objection to this from the employers' point of view since, 
obviously, they can not be compelled to engage any persons not 
selected by themselves or considered unsuitable by them for any 
reason whatsoever and since, on the other hand, the exchanges have 
an absolutely complete record of all persons belonging to an insured 
trade who are out of work at any one time. But, on the other hand, 
in the absence of better evidence, the figures given above seem to indi- 
cate that the use made of the labor exchanges by employers in these 
trades is probably at least as satisfactory as the use made by em- 
ployers in other trades; and it is doubtful whether much is to be 
gained by making their voluntary cooperation an obligatory one. 

One unfortunate effect of the unemployment insurance law on the 
work of the labor exchanges, though a purely temporary one, has 
been that for a year or two it laid such a heavy burden of additional 
work upon a staff which had hardly begun to master the more 
intricate problems of the labor-exchange work proper that improve- 
ments and developments of that work have been held back. The 
growth of the work of the exchanges, that is, the fuller use made of 
them on the part of both workers and employers, as illustrated by the 
figures given in Table 1, is all the more remarkable in view of the 
fact that at the same time the attention, especially of the higher 
officers in the system, was also taken up with the administration of 
another new, original, large, and difficult piece of social legislation. 

EFFECT OF LABOR EXCHANGES ON CASUAL LABOR. 

So far we have considered the results of the operations of the labor 
exchanges in general. They have, however, in addition, been in- 
spired from the first by a number of specific social purposes. First 
among these is that of the " decasualization " of labor. 

Recent inquiries into the nature of the unemployment problem 
and the composition of the unemployed in any one place or at any 
one time have indicated that normally the chronically underemployed 
form a much larger proportion of the total than had generally 
been thought. A more serious endeavor to mitigate the evil effects 
of unemployment made in the United Kingdom, especially after 
the trade crisis of 1904-5, also showed that they were the most 
difficult and socially the most menacing cases to be dealt with. Not 
only in the great harbor cities, such as London and Liverpool, but 
in many manufacturing centers a large part of the normal margin 
of unemployed labor was found, on inquiry, to consist of men who 
never work more than a few days at a time, earning sometimes wages 
that are fairly good as reckoned by the hour, but quite insufficient, 
on an average, to maintain themselves and their families in health, 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 31 

decency, and modest comfort. It was obvious that if all this labor 
were recruited at a central labor exchange instead of separately by 
each employer at his own door the total volume of available work 
might be distributed in such a way as to give regular or nearly regu- 
lar employment to some of the previously casual workers, while 
others would have to go entirely without work. This policy, so far 
as practicable, has been applied to the work of the national labor 
exchanges. It is the only one by which the normal surplus of labor 
due to its unsystematic and wasteful marketing can substantially be 
reduced. 

It is nothing more than a development of the general policy of 
giving priority to the most qualified workers in filling a vacancy, a 
policy which obviously results in leaving those least experienced or 
skilled in a trade or least satisfactory on account of physical or 
moral defects more frequently out of work than the most able and 
desirable. In applying the principle to the filling of vacancies in 
occasional work some naturally are " squeezed out " of the labor 
market altogether. Owing to the hardships which would result if 
such a policy were suddenly and rigorously applied, it has in practice 
been only in the background, influencing but not dominating the 
choice of applicants for jobs. In some cases, however, the excessive 
labor reserve due to the separate margin of casual labor kept for their 
own convenience by a number of employers in the same trade and 
locality was on inquiry found to be so stupendous, so wasteful of 
character and virility among the less favored portions of these under- 
employed, and so unnecessary that steps were taken at least to pre- 
vent the entry of. new workers into a field already so sadly over- 
crowded. 

The most discussed example of the application of such a policy 
is the Liverpool dock scheme which, started in 1912, has attracted 
world-wide attention. 1 Briefly, it operates by a system of connected 
branch exchanges or clearing houses at different points along the 
water front, administered by joint committees of employers and 
workers, of which the local representative of the Board of Trade is 
the secretary. Here tallies are issued to registered workmen, and the 
total weekly earnings, sometimes made at a number of different docks, 
are paid out to them in a lump, weekly sum. In spite of a natural 
initial prejudice against such a scheme on the part of the longshore- 
men who partly had no desire to work more regularly and partly 
feared that a concentration of the available work upon a smaller 

1 The methods used in regularizing dock labor in Liverpool are described by Mr. Charles 
B. Barnes in "The Longshoremen" (Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1915), and 
more fully by their originator, Mr. R. Williams, in " The Liverpool Docks Problem " 
(Northern Publishing Co., Liverpool, 1912), and "First Year's Working of the Liverpool 
Docks Scheme" (P. S. King & Son, London, 1914). 



32 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

number would be used for lowering hourly rates of wages, the least 
that can be said for it is that it has proved workable. Indeed, cer- 
tain details of the system have become so popular with the workers 
that they would go out on strike if they were Avithdrawn. 

The scheme is made possible or, at least, helped by the national 
system of compulsory health insurance with which it is linked up, 
the employers having been persuaded to limit their hiring of labor 
to men licensed by the clearing houses by the financiaFbait of a re- 
duction in their contributions to the insurance of these employees. 1 
When the scheme was started 68 employers were parties to it and 
31,000 laborers were registered under it. In addition to six clearing 
houses, situated at convenient points along the 8 miles of docks, each 
dealing with a definite dock area — stamping insurance cards, paying 
wages (for two-thirds of the employers) , registering workmen, etc. — 
there are 14 surplus stands, each connected by telephone with the 
local clearing house to which it belongs, for the purpose of providing 
shelter for the longshoremen belonging to the particular section who 
are not hired at one of the four regular hiring times of the da}^, but 
may be distributed from there to any part of the docks where they 
may be wanted. In practice it means that each shipowner, stevedore, 
or firm, employing labor in closed docks, subject to this agreement 
has a more or less regular supply of labor engaged. In the case 
of the majority, this labor is paid through the clearing house 
for the particular section. For any additional help that may be re- 
quired, the local clearing house obtains labor either from one of the 
local surplus stands or, if necessary, from one in some other section 
of the water front. 

While dock labor as a whole can not be entirely regularized, this 
system at least provides for a complete pooling of all the reserves 
which individual employers of longshoremen require at times of 
pressure. Various schemes for absorbing the surplus labor of the 
docks into other occupations or otherwise providing for it have been 
discussed, but none so far have been carried into practice. Indeed, 
it is an achievement to have succeeded, in so short a time, by the 
methods pursued, in virtually closing the doors of employment in the 
Liverpool docks to all who are not members of the union or other- 
wise registered as regular dock workers. Only four years ago every 

1 Under section 99 of the National Insurance Act, 1911, the Board of Trade is able to 
deduct the workman's share of the health insurance contribution (4 pence) [8 cents] from 
Ids total weekly earnings paid at the clearing house in respect of all the jobs held by him 
during the week. The amount of contribution for the same man's insurance from different 
employers is not debited to them separately several times over (as would be the case had 
each in the course of the week separately engaged the worker outside the organized sys- 
tem), but is deducted only once in respect of the one man and apportioned between the 
various employers according to the total number of men employed by each during the 
week. A small commission, covering the actual clerical cost, is charged employers for 
paying their wages for them. 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 33 

unemployed workman looked upon the docks as a possible means tff 
earning a few dollars. Mr. Williams computed in 1914 that the 
maximum demand never exceeds 23,000 men in the busiest season, and 
that the number of men registered and in possession of tallies aver- 
aged about 31,000. Not more than 10.4 per cent of these during the 
first year worked 52 weeks. Over one-half (55.5 per cent) worked less 
than 40 weeks, two-fifths (38.8 per cent) less than 27 weeks, and nearly 
a quarter (23.5 per cent) less than 14 weeks. The statistics gleaned 
from the payment of wages through the clearing houses, in Mr. 
Williams' words, 1 " prove very clearly that shipowners are suffering 
very severely by reason of the fact that they have no reliable reserve 
of labor" and "that, given efficient and systematic organization, a 
very large number of men could be permanently employed year in 
and year out at the docks." But neither have employers as yet reached 
a recognition of this fact nor are dockers as a class willing, so far, to 
work regularly for the same employer. 2 

A similar scheme in Goole, a small east coast port, has proven even 
more successful in practice and is warmly praised by employers and 
employed. Arrangements under section 99 of the insurance act, 
methods of registration, issue of tallies, and payment of wages, are 
much the same as in Liverpool. There are two dock waiting rooms 
to which, through the central labor exchange, employers can com- 
municate at the earliest possible moment the arrival of ships, number 
of men required, time of starting work, etc., and, in case of need, re- 
quests for additional men at any hour. A feature of this scheme is 
the payment of advances of wages to men who are not accustomed to 
wait for a weekly pay day from sums deposited with the clearing 
house for this purpose by employers at the beginning of each week. 
On a smaller scale the main elements of the scheme are also applied 
to the hiring of longshoremen in Sunderland. But here both partici- 
pation of employers and registration of workers desirous of employ- 
ment by them are optional, and the total number of men affected is 
small. 

1 " The First Year's Working of the Liverpool Dock Scheme," p. 130. 

2 Of considerable interest is the successful creation of a force of permanently employed 
longshoremen in Liverpool in the "Dock Battalion, Liverpool Regiment," started in the 
spring of 1915, of which Lord Derby is colonel and Mr. It. Williams is major and adjutant. 
At the end of August, 1915, it was 1,200 strong, and promised to prove an object lesson 
to the port as to what can be done by regular labor. The battalion was primarily formed 
for the purpose of doing Government work, and spends over nine-tenths of its time on 
discharging and loading for it ammunition, provisions for the troops, and the like. The 
men are properly enlisted soldiers and in every way subject to military discipline. They 
are made up entirely of unionists, and, in addition to the regular hourly earnings at union 
rates — but in their case guaranteed not to be less than 35s. ($8.52) a week — they receive 
Infantry rates of daily pay, amounting to Is. (24.3 cents) a day in the case of privates. 
Their hours have been regulated as far as possible, even in spite of abnormal pressure at 
times, and, by one in an excellent position to judge, it is thought " that the influence of 
the battalion is bound to have a very striking effect on future work of the docks after the 
war." 

47784°— 16 3 



34 



BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 



Casual labor is dealt with under a separate scheme also in the 
case of cloth porters in Manchester and cotton porters in Liver- 
pool ; the provision of separate registries and waiting rooms here re- 
duce for the workers the need of standing about the gates of different 
warehouses in all sorts of weather and enable employers to secure. 
at a few minutes' notice, the best of all the men available in the city 
for the purpose. The health insurance contribution cards in this case 
also are stamped by the registry officials with an appreciable saving to 
employers. The expense incurred by the clearing house in stamp- 
ing the contribution cards and paying out the wages on behalf of 
employers who are parties to the agreement is charged to them on 
a pro rata basis. In Manchester, the standing of the porters affected 
has been considerably raised by this arrangement. Men who pre- 
viously worked for only one employer — sometimes not more than a 
day or two in a week — now often work for four different employers 
on different days of the same week and take substantial wages home 
with them at the week end. But of at least equal importance to the 
higher earnings in all these cases is the increased self-respect of 
workers who now await a call for them in a decent environment 
where previously they were for long hours hanging about a particu- 
lar work place in the hope of attracting attention and being engaged 
before others. 

The placements of the special exchanges for dock laborers, cotton 
porters, and cloth porters are enumerated separately in the Board of 
Trade statistics and are of interest although, of course, by far the 
greater amount of placement of casual workers is done through the 
general register of the exchanges all over the country. In 1915, the 
number of men given casual employment through the special casual 
registers was 9,401, and the number of jobs given them about 53,286, 
not including 37,325 jobs filled through the clearing-house system for 
longshoremen in Liverpool. 

Table 6.— NUMBER OF JOBS FOUND THROUGH CASUAL REGISTER, 1911 TO 1914. 



[ Source : Seventeenth Abstract of Labor Statistics of the United Kingdom and Board 
of Trade Labor Gazette for February, 1915.] 


Class of laborers. 


1911 


1912 


1913 


1914 


Cotton porters, Liverpool 


4,237 
66,701 
22,220 


3,108 
62,047 
158,881 


1,958 
69,013 
152,635 


1,652 




38,914 
114,401 






Total 


93, 158 


224,036 


223, 606 


154,967 



The sudden rise in the number of jobs found for longshoremen in 
1912 is due to the inclusion of figures for men engaged under the 
Liverpool clearing-house scheme which came into operation in July, 
1912. The considerable reduction in the number of jobs found 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 35 

through these special registries in 1914 and 1915, as compared with 
1913, is undoubtedly due to the effect of the war on these occupations 
in the latter part of the former and throughout the latter year. But 
the steady decrease between 1911 and 1914 in the case of the Liver- 
pool cotton porters, whose occupation is seasonal as well as casual, 
may perhaps partly be attributed to a genuine success in making em- 
ployment less casual. 

Another scheme of regularization which uses as a lever compulsory 
insurance against unemployment under Part II of the act of 1911, 
as well as health insurance, has been introduced in the leading South 
Wales ports to organize the work of men casually engaged in ship 
repairing. In this case no provision is made for the payment of 
wages on behalf of employers ; but the exchange takes charge af the 
stamping both of the health and unemployment insurance contribu- 
tion cards and renders weekly accounts to each employer showing the 
amounts due in respect of contributions under both these parts of the 
insurance act. While each employer contributes to the health in- 
surance of each worker employed by him during the week according 
to the number of days' labor used, his contribution to unemploy- 
ment insurance does not vary but is at the full weekly rate, whether 
the person insured has been employed during the whole week or only 
part of it. In this instance, also, the clerical expense incurred by 
the labor exchange is charged to the employers in the shape of a 
small definite* monthly fee. 

While, on the whole, public authorities have been slow to avail 
themselves of the services of the national labor exchanges, some of the 
larger municipalities, notably Birmingham, have agreed to engage 
all their temporary labor through them. In Leicester nearly all 
employers in the building trades have adopted a scheme under which 
the great majority of their vacancies are filled through the labor ex- 
change, thus lessening the need for individual workmen to tramp 
from one builder's yard to another in search of work, which is the 
usual procedure of securing work in those trades. 1 

Considerable efforts have been made by the women's branches in 
different divisions to " decasualize " as far as possible the work of 
charwomen. In Glasgow and other large cities the educational 
authorities have been persuaded to regularize the cleaning work in the 
schools. Large private employers also have similarly been induced 

1 It should be noted that, in addition to the various schemes here instanced, provision is 
also made for the use of health insurance as an incentive to " decasualization " in the In- 
surance Amending Act of 1913. Clause 19 of that act gives power to the insurance com- 
missioners to schedule any particular trade in any district as being of a casual nature, and 
to order that instead of the usual apportionment of the health insurance contribution be- 
tween worker and employer — 4d. (8 cents) per week by the former and 3d. (6 cents) by 
the latter — the former shall pay only Id. (2 cents) and the latter 6d. -(12 cents). This, 
of course, makes much more expensive to employers the hiring of workers by the day or 
hour, because the full contribution has to be paid by the first employer in any one week. 
No report is available so far on the application and result of this clause. 



36 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

to replace as far as possible the miscellaneous hiring of numbers of 
temporarily employed cleaners in their plants by the creation of a 
few permanent positions. Much yet remains to be done in that 
direction. 1 

EFFECT OF LABOR EXCHANGES ON SEASONAL LABOR. 

The problem of seasonal labor is not, perhaps, quite so pronounced 
in the United Kingdom as it is in the United States, since weather 
fluctuations are less severe. Yet it is of fundamental importance, 
and, from the first, the labor-exchange system has been used to con- 
tribute as far as possible to its solution by studying ways and means 
of dovetailing different seasonal employments in the same locality. 
It has also, in some cases, been able to reduce the seasonal nature of 
certain employments by persuading sympathetic large employers 
to rearrange their policy of production in such a way as to regularize 
employment. They have exercised a not negligible influence in 
this direction on public opinion, and through it on the enterprise of 
municipal , and other public authorities and of big corporations. In 
an eastern seaside resort, for instance, owing to the representations 
made by the manager of the exchange, the city was induced to make 
a more deliberate endeavor to carry on all works of improvement 
as far as possible in the off season when large numbers of unskilled 
workers, engaged during the rest of the year in the many different 
branches of the conveyance, hotel, and catering trades, are apt to be 
completely idle. In at least one place a railroad company was 
induced to rearrange its annual schedule for painting and structural 
alterations to station premises, bridges, etc., in such a way as to spread 
the employment offered over a longer period and have as much of 
the indoor work as possible done during the winter months when 
the building trades are slack. 

Special efforts have been made, through the central and divisional 
offices, to secure workers in sufficient numbers for seasonal rural 
occupations of importance. 2 Thus, in 1915, between June and Octo- 
ber, 7,106 vacancies were filled for fruit and hop pickers, the corre- 
sponding figure for 1914 being 8,031. Not only in the south of 
England but also in Perth and other parts of Scotland the number 
of women placed each year as fruit pickers is on the increase. Simi- 
larly, the Edinburgh exchange and others fill hundreds of vacancies 
for women in the potato-digging seasons. It is not impossible that 
with a development of this special service the labor exchanges may 

1 The special difficulties connected with the casual employment of women are further 
referred to on page 37. 

2 It is, however, the general policy of the department to do nothing in the direction of 
encouraging the seasonal flow of Irish lahor into British agriculture, which, for long, has 
been one of the least satisfactory features of British rural life. 



THE BKITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 37 

contribute to revive in certain districts branches of cultivation which 
have been on the decline for lack of an adequate labor supply at the 
proper season. 

Arrangements are made each year with the general post office to 
hire temporary labor for a few weeks in connection with the Christ- 
mas traffic. The number of applicants for this special work, 50,400 
in 1915, and the number of vacancies filled, 32,039, are very consider- 
able. The number of vacancies filled was 33,264 in 1911, 39,700 in 

1912, 42,343 in 1913, 35,553 in 1914, the decrease in 1914 and 1915, 
as compared with the two previous years, obviously being due to war 
conditions. 

EFFECT OF LABOR EXCHANGES ON FEMALE LABOR. 

All of the larger labor exchanges and many of the smaller ones 
have separate departments for women, administered by woman offi- 
cers. In each divisional office there is at least one woman officer 
of senior rank who supervises the women's work in the division. In 
1915, 1,232,891 woman applicants were registered, an increase of 
nearly 526,000 over the previous year, and of more than 700,000 over 

1913, which was due to the great demand for women in Government 
service and in the replacement of men in transportation, agricul- 
ture, textile industry, etc., and also to increased registration of women 
engaged in nonresident domestic service, including laundering and 
washing. The law does not permit the labor exchanges to deal 
with indoor domestic servants, except in the case of girls under 17 
years of age, who in some districts may be placed in such positions 
by the juvenile branches under the supervision of the advisory com- 
mittees. A large part of the woman applicants coming under the 
heading of domestic servants — over one-half of all woman applicants 
in 1914 and over one-third in 1915 come under that heading — are 
older women, many of them married or widowed, who enter the 
lowest paid forms of service and often are engaged in entirely casual 
or seasonal employments. Of 385,101 vacancies for women workers 
filled in 1915, 145,253 were for those included in this general group 
of domestic servants. 

The placement of these women — hotel, restaurant, and laundry 
workers with well-defined qualifications apart — presents special diffi- 
culties, because of the less concise description of ability and ex- 
perience possessed by the worker in domestic service oompared with 
that possible in industrial occupations. A further complication 
arises from the fact that some of the applicants desire only tempo- 
rary work to help over a period of financial strain in the home and 
may have little or no qualifications for the work they intend to 
undertake apart from the limited experience of their own home; 



38 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

while others frankly desire casual work to secure " pin money," and 
still others are obliged to work regularly to contribute substantially 
to the household income. In the larger exchanges, applicants for 
permanent and temporary employment are as far as possible segre- 
gated; but it is not possible to carry through such a policy com- 
pletely. Those most desirous and in need of regular employment 
often are among the least suitable to fill the vacancies about which 
the exchange has information, through lack of experience, strength, 
health, skill, appearance, or other necessary qualities. Yarious sug- 
gestions have been made for improving the employability of this type 
of woman by special training in housework, simple nursing, laundry 
work, washing, and the like ; but none of them, so far as the writer 
is aware, has as yet been put into practice. 

Girls under IT are dealt with by the juvenile branches or ad- 
visory committees. In 1914, 61,320 of them were placed, 7,434 of 
them more than once, and about one-third of them in domestic 
service. 1 While, as a general rule, there is an oversupply of boy 
and girl labor in British industrial centers, there are some districts 
in Lancashire and Yorkshire where, owing to the rapid expansion 
of the textile industry, the supply of girl labor never comes up to 
the demand. Since in these districts wages are relatively high, labor 
exchange managers in other parts of these and neighboring coun- 
ties have endeavored for some time to move to them families with 
many daughters or families in low-wage districts Avhich are de- 
pendent on the earnings of their female members. In one case 
which has come to the writer's notice, the officer of an exchange 
prided himself on having caused a whole street of people to move 
from a small country town to a manufacturing center. So far as 
these efforts have gone, they have been entirely successful, in some 
cases bringing considerable prosperity into homes which previously, 
through lack of opportunity, had been poverty stricken. 2 But it 
must be confessed that on a large scale such removals, by depleting 
the rural labor market and by making the male and adult members of 
the family more dependent on the earnings of their minor and fe- 
male relatives, would not be devoid of an element of social danger. 

The labor exchanges have proved of great value in organizing the 
female labor market during the war. In March, 1915, the president 
of the Board of Trade issued a special appeal to women who were 
prepared to accept employment, if offered, to enter their names at 
the labor exchanges in a special register of women for war service. 

1 The corresponding figures for 1915 were not published at the time this article was 
prepared. 

2 The officers in these cases not only were careful to select suitable families already 
largely dependent on the work of their female members and with a minimum of local ties, 
but also went to considerable trouble to secure friends and suitable accommodation for 
them in the towns to which they helped them to migrate. 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 39 

The total number thus registered to the end of the year was 124,405 
(including 1,397 women also on the general register), of whom 60,651 
have since canceled their registration or have been removed from the 
register as not effective. The total number placed in employment 
from this register was 8,255, of whom 1,268 were placed in armament 
work, 880 in agriculture, 978 in transport, and 1,234 in commercial 
and clerical occupations. The number remaining on the register at 
the end of the year was 55,499. 1 

EFFECT OF LABOR EXCHANGES ON JUVENILE LABOR. 

A problem to which the British labor-exchange system has per- 
haps given more attention than to any other is that of the employ- 
ment of minors. The essential difference between the placement of 
adult and juvenile workers is that in the case of the latter employ- 
ment has not only to be secured but a career to be chosen. Even more 
than in the case of adults, the endeavor must be to protect the appli- 
cant against a possible wrong choice and, subsequently to his place- 
ment, to watch over the initial stages of his industrial career. For 
this purpose, special juvenile advisory committees were created un- 
der the Labor Exchanges Act, representative of employers, trade- 
unionists, and persons specially interested in, and having special 
knowledge of, children. Also, nearly everywhere, one or more sepa- 
rate rooms are provided for boy and girl applicants for work, with 
separate access from the street, and so arranged that informal, 
personal talk between the officers and the individual applicants is 
possible. 

One of the essential conditions of success in the juvenile work of 
labor exchanges is the close cooperation between those charged with 
the duty of placement and those charged with the duty of education. 
After some slight initial difficulties and jealousies between the edu- 
cational and vocational authorities this condition is being admirably 

1 The number of women actually placed from this special register may seem surprisingly 
small, especially if compared with a statement made by the minister of munitions (Mr. 
Lloyd George) at a meeting in Newcastle-on-Tyne in December, 1915, that half a million 
women were then working in munition factories. The explanation is that the vast ma- 
jority of those engaged on Government work were previously engaged in other industries 
and were transferred on the general register. 

The large number of applicants dropped from the special register or who have with- 
drawn from it is explained in two ways : First, the register distinguishes between those 
who at some time, usually previous to marriage, have been engaged in gainful occupations 
and those who have not. A large proportion of the latter, though registered on applica- 
tion, have subsequently been removed from the effective reserve as unsuitable. Second, 
when, upon the publication of the appeal, women patriotically offered their services in such 
large numbers, unscrupulous employers in different parts of the country, munition manu- 
facturers and others, were found guilty of using the situation for exercising pressure upon 
wages, in some cases actually replacing regular paid workers by volunteers. The number 
of such cases may not have been large, but it sufficed to startle the country, and resulted 
in large numbers of withdrawals from the special register and the exercise of greater 
vigilance on the part of labor-exchange managers. 



40 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OP LABOR STATISTICS. 

fulfilled under the present system. The juvenile work is carried 
on in each locality under one of two different acts of Parliament. 
In March, 1916, labor exchanges in 59 cities were aided by juvenile 
advisory committees appointed under the provisions of the Labor 
Exchanges Act of 1909. That means the work of placement and 
vocational guidance is primarily in the hands of the officers of the 
national authority, the Board of Trade, assisted by local advisers. In 
69 towns and cities committees have been appointed by the local au- 
thorities under the Choice of Employments Act of 1910, all but two of 
which cooperate with the Board of Trade and leave the actual place- 
ment work to the juvenile branch of the local labor exchange, while 
they themselves are primarily responsible for the work of guidance 
and supervision after placement. 1 The great importance of a close 
coordination between the work of placement and that of vocational 
guidance and educational oversight in the case of minors appears 
from the fact that about a quarter of the vacancies filled with boys 
and girls under 17 years of age represent the first situations obtained 
after leaving school. 2 

The sincerity of the endeavor to make this placement work of real 
social value may perhaps best be illustrated by two quotations from 
a circular issued jointly by the two national authorities responsible 
for it — the Board of Trade and the Board of Education. 3 

We are of opinion that the employment of juveniles should be 
primarily considered from the point of view of their educational 
interests and permanent careers rather than from that of their imme- 
diate earning capacities, and accordingly we urge upon local educa- 
tion authorities the desirability of undertaking, in accordance with 
the principles set out in the present memorandum, the responsibili- 
ties offered to them by the new act. 

The work to be undertaken by public bodies in giving assistance in 
the choice of employment for juveniles may be regarded as having 
two branches. In the first place there is the task of giving such ad- 
vice to boys and girls and their parents as will induce them to extend 
where possible the period of education, and to select, when employ- 
ment becomes necessary, occupations which are suited to the indi- 
vidual capacities of the children, and by preference, those which 
afford prospects not merely of immediate wages but also of useful 
training and permanent employment. In the second place, there is 
the practical task of registering the actual applications for employ- 
ment and bringing the applicants into touch with employers who 
have notified vacancies of the kind desired. 

1 In London there are 20 local advisory committees, appointed by the General Advisory 
Committee for Juvenile Employment. In addition to the committees enumerated, there 
are in Scotland three school boards with whom the Board of Trade cooperates in working 
employment bureaus established under the Education (Scotland) Act, 1908, and three 
juvenile employment committees in England, not appointed under a,ny direct statutory 
authority, with whom the Board of Trade also cooperates. 

2 23.6 per cent of the boys and 26.7 per cent of the girls in 1915, as compared with 

3 Joint memorandum, 1911. 

24.2 and 28 per cent, respectively, in 1914, and 24 and 30.4 per cent, respectively, in 1913. 



THE BKITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 41 

The Board of Trade further outlines the kind of cooperation with 
the elementary schools which is desirable : 1 

Every advisory committee will work out for itself the methods 
which are best adapted to its own local needs. There are, however, 
certain broad lines of action which seem to be applicable at least to 
the great majority of committees. It is in the first place necessary 
that some sort of report should be obtained from the schools upon 
those children with whom the committee are to deal directly; while 
certain subsidiary advantages are secured if a report is obtained 
upon all children leaving, whether work has been found for them 
independently or not. Such an arrangement, for example, enables a 
committee or its representatives to ,deal wisely with children who 
may fall out of employment at a later date and to exercise a useful 
supervision upon those who have independently obtained employ- 
ment. The record obtained from the schools should show generally 
the capabilities and the attainments of the pupil, and special results 
of the final medical inspection and any wishes or recommendations 
with regard to employment and continued education. 

Considerable attention has, from the first, been paid to the super- 
vision or, as it is more frequently called in England, the " after care " 
of the children after placement. This service is carried on, as a rule, 
by committees of voluntary workers attached to the different schools, 
but sometimes directly to the juvenile placement bureau and under 
the direct control of the manager or the officer appointed by the 
education authority under the Choice of Employments Act for the co- 
ordination of the placement work with the educational system. Often 
the persons responsible for the after care of individual children are 
appointed before these have left school, and their names placed on 
the school-leaving form. The latter is a communication from the 
principal of the school to the advisory committee for each child leav- 
ing the school, stating his physical and mental characteristics, ability, 
health, probable date of leaving, standard reached, and particulars 
about the kind of employment and of further education recom- 
mended. The supervisor has to report regularly to the committee 
and has to keep in touch with the juvenile worker and his parents 
whether the conditions of employment and of home are good or bad. 

Unless supervision is arranged for in respect of each juvenile, the 
exchange has no certain means of knowing whether the juvenile and 
his parents are satisfied with the place or even whether the juvenile 
is still in the place found for him. The person named in the school- 
leaving form as supervisor should be regarded as one who will repre- 
sent to the advisory committee at the exchange the juvenile's point of 
view. 2 

It is even more important in the case of child workers than in that 
of adults to prevent frequent changes of occupation and to safe- 

1 Circular, June, 1912. 

2 Handbook for the Use of the Local Advisory Committee for Juvenile Employment in 
London, April, 1913. 



42 



BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 



guard such periods of idleness as must occur during unavoidable 
changes between jobs. The first of these aims, under the British sys- 
tem, is increasingly well attained by careful placement; the second 
is helped at least by the interest of the voluntary visitors in their 
charges. But periods of idleness in youth should be utilized, if at all 
possible, for some educational training which will increase the ability 
of those out of work to secure and retain employment. In this respect 
very little has as yet been attempted in connection with the labor 
exchanges in spite of the fact that the insurance act expressly au- 
thorizes the provision of educational training for unemployed in- 
sured workers whose prospects to secure employment might be 
improved by that means. At one or two branch exchanges in Lon- 
don classes for unemployed boys have been tentatively established 
by advisory committees, but a wider program of adequate provision 
for this special need, though indorsed by educationalists of national 
reputation, has not yet been realized. 1 

The work among minors has so far been the most successful part 
of the placement work of the labor exchanges. The proportion of 
reported vacancies filled in every year since 1911 was less than in 
the case of adults, but the proportion of individual applicants regis- 
tered for whom work was found was substantially greater. 

Table 7.— PROPORTION OF VACANCIES FILLED AND OF APPLICANTS PROVIDED WITH 

WORK, 1911 to 1915. 

[Source: Seventeenth Abstract of Labor Statistics of the United Kingdom and Board 
of Trade Labor Gazette for February, 1916.] 



Year. 


Per cent of reported 
vacancies filled. 


Per cent of regis- 
tered persons pro- 
vided with work. 


Adults. 


Minors. 


Adults. 


Minors. 


1911 


80 
80 

78 
77 
73 


75 
70 
66 
69 
69 


28 
33 
32 
36 
44 


45 
46 
51 

48 
52 


1912 


1913 


1914 


1915 





A relatively shorter supply of, or larger demand for, boy and girl 
labor as compared with adult labor would, of course, be sufficient to 
explain the placement of a larger proportion of juvenile applicants 
and the nonsatisf action of a larger proportion of requests for juvenile 
workers from employers. But there is no reason for believing that 
during the period covered the demand for juvenile labor was rela- 
tively greater than the demand for adult labor. It was a period of 
exceptionally good trade during which the demand for adult workers 



1 See " The Training of Unemployed Youths," by Rowntree and Lasker, in Bulletin of 
International Association on Unemployment, June, 1912, and authorities there quoted. 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 43 

must have been exceptionally keen. 1 Taking the relative demand 
for adult and juvenile labor in a normal year as a basis of com- 
parison, one would expect the demand for juvenile labor to be 
relatively higher in a year of bad trade and lower in a year of good 
trade when the most expensive reserve of labor, that is obviously of 
adult persons, is called into use. We therefore have this phenomenon 
that although for the reason stated the demand for adult workers 
must have been exceptionally keen, yet the proportion of juvenile ap- 
plicants provided with work was substantially higher. At the same 
time a comparatively smaller proportion of the jobs offered by em- 
ployers was filled. May one not perhaps conclude from this that 
the officers of the juvenile branches or advisory committees have been 
successful in a more deliberate choice than is possible with adults 
of suitable positions for their applicants without, for that reason, 
leaving a correspondingly larger proportion of them unprovided 
with work? 

While there is still some persistent and, as we shall see, not always 
unjustifiable criticism of the work of the general labor exchanges 
both from employers and from employed, there are no two opinions 
on the value of the juvenile work where it has been organized on 
the basis of the agreement between the Board of Trade and the 
Board of Education. Employers find that they are saved much in- 
vestigation and disappointment by consulting the manager of the 
juvenile labor exchange about the school record, home conditions, 
previous occupations, special abilities, and character of the boy and 
girl workers they wish to engage. They are helped by a very thor- 
ough preliminary selection, based on ample data, made on their 
behalf by officers of experience, even Avhen they have to make a final 
choice for themselves. The system where fully worked out secures 
for them the aid of the supervisors in persuading to stay in their em- 
ployment young workers who give satisfaction and whom they de- 
sire eventually to promote into permanent adult positions, but who 
are apt, without some controlling influence, to throw up their job 
on the least provocation. Eeversely, they can return with a better 
conscience boys and girls who are manifestly unsuitable for the 
work in hand but for whom, since they have entered their employ- 
ment, they feel some responsibility. The advantages of the system 
to the young people themselves and to society at large are so obvious 
and are so well understood that they need hardly be dwelt upon 
here. 2 

1 The average yearly proportion of trade-union members unemployed in 1911 to 1914, 
for instance, was only one-half that of the previous four years — 2.9 per cent, as compared 
with 6 per cent. — Seventeenth Abstract of Labor Statistics of the United Kingdom, p. 6. 

2 See especially "Youth, School, and Vocation," by Meyer Bloomfield, Houghton, Mifflin 
Co., Boston, 1915, and other works by the same author. 



44 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

ADVANTAGES TO EMPLOYERS. 

To round out the general description given of the British system 
of labor exchanges and its results it will be well briefly to consider 
the advantages which, in normal times, their operations have brought 
to employers and workers. In doing this the writer is obliged to fall 
back upon notes taken on the occasion of two detailed personal in- 
vestigations made by him in 1911 and in 1913, the results of which 
have been communicated in part to the International Association on 
Unemployment. 1 On both occasions a definite schedule of questions 
was submitted to the persons interviewed ; 2 on both occasions the 
replies received verbally and in writing were contradictory on many 
points and the general tendencies and effects had to be studied largely 
by personal observation. 

The great majority of employers when the scheme was started 
were opposed to it, either from political prejudice or because they 
were satisfied with their method of hiring labor, or because they could 
not get away from the idea that it was meant as a means of disbur- 
dening the community of the care of the inefficient and " unem- 
ployable" by palming them off on unsuspecting employment clerks 
and foremen. There was also some hostility due to the interference 
of the National Government in what many regarded as a local prob- 
lem. Even after five years of education through actual practice the 
labor exchanges have not yet succeeded entirely in opening the eyes of 
the public to the fact that the causes of unemployment are industrial 
rather than regional and that the wider the area over which it is 
possible to spread operations for the prevention of ill adjustment, 
the more probable is their success. 

The criticism that the labor exchanges are often staffed with men 
from a distance who are entirely unacquainted with local trades and 
usages and frequently supply workers of the wrong kind simply be- 
cause they do not understand the technical description and terminol- 
ogy of the jobs given in notifications of vacancies, is frequently heard 
and has justification in fact. As a remedy, the transformation of the 
national exchanges into a federation of municipal exchanges has been 
advocated. On the other hand, there has also been consistent oppo- 
sition to a purely municipal scheme. One large builder, for instance, 
told the writer : " On no account must we have municipal participa- 
tion in the management of labor exchanges. Municipal management 
of employment bureaus has always been guided by sentiment and not 
by business principles. They never get the highest type of man be- 
cause they will give preference to local men or to men with a fam- 
ily." Several employers favored a rule under which, with retention 

1 Bulletins of October-December, 1911, and July-September, 1913. 

2 See Appendix E. 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 45 

of national control, either the manager or some other prominent offi- 
cial of each exchange must be drawn from a local industry. But it 
it is clear that such an arrangement would not be satisfactory. Where 
officers have been appointed who previously were engaged in local 
industry, one continually hears the charge that they know nothing 
of the other trades in the town or that they lean to the side of the 
employers or of the labor associations, as the case may be. Such a 
man, in fact, just because of his local affiliations previous to the 
appointment, has special handicaps to overcome and is apt to be less 
effective than a stranger of equal ability. 

The solution of this special problem, lack of intimate knowledge, 
would rather seem to lie in the direction of a gradual accumulation 
of local data and experience, that is, continuity of service on the part 
of the staff, and the aid of local advisers from the ranks of both em- 
ployers and workers. At the present time there are 17 advisory trade 
committees, consisting of an equal number of employers' and work- 
men's representatives appointed by the Board of Trade. Several of 
them cover whole divisions (such as Ireland and West Midlands), 
others smaller industrial sections of a more or less homogeneous char- 
acter (such as Liverpool and district, Manchester and district, West 
Eiding of Yorkshire, southern section, North Wales, etc.). In one or 
two cases, the mutually hostile attitude of employers' and workers' or- 
ganizations was so firmly rooted that the advisory committee, instead 
of helping the efficiency of the exchange or group of exchanges with 
which it was affiliated, was rather apt to raise new difficulties by con- 
tinual bickering over all sorts of questions of minor importance — so 
that some of these committees, though still nominally in existence, 
have been allowed in practice, more or less, to vegetate. Generally 
speaking, however, the advisory trade committees have contributed 
not a little to a smooth working of the exchanges' activities. In at 
least one case known to the writer, the cooperation on a matter of 
common interest on the part of the representatives of management 
and labor has had the effect of bringing into closer personal sym- 
pathy men who previously saw each other only on the occasion of 
trade disputes when anger and mis judgment prevailed. 

It is unquestionably true that, at the beginning, many labor-ex- 
change officials, in an excess of zeal, were more concerned with piling 
up figures of vacancies filled than with a careful selection of suitable 
men. When they failed to find men of the description wanted, in- 
stead of admitting their inability, they tried to place others who came 
near the description and happened to be out of work. In the course 
of time, however, especially as the knowledge and experience of the 
labor-exchange staffs increased, this tendency has practically disap- 
peared, and the attitude of employers, in consequence, has become 
more sympathetic. 



46 BULLETIN" OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

Especially, many of the largest employers and those employing 
many varieties of skilled persons have found the labor exchange of 
great practical value to them. To secure a man of experience in 
some comparatively rare trade frequently required considerable ex- 
penditure on advertising and long delays. Now, such a man, if at 
all available, however distant, can be traced without delay through 
the clearing house of the labor exchange. In the writer's own knowl- 
edge, the operations of one divisional exchange, at least, have ex- 
tended to the filling of positions for quite a number of professional 
persons, such as a cookery teacher, a social worker in a factory, and 
an architect. Of this advantage of the automatic enlargement of the 
field for inquiry when persons of the description wanted are not to 
be found in the locality, a large manufacturer says i 1 

Employers now have the great advantage of being able to consult 
an up-to-date and live list of unemployed which oversteps limiting 
geographical boundaries. Let me give a few instances of what is 
occurring. York has found builders for the Doncaster coal fields. 
Leeds has imported borers for horizontal boring machines (a class of 
labor which it is always difficult to obtain). Workmen in so highly 
specialized a trade as fine gun-sight work have recently been trans- 
ferred from the South to the North of England. A firm of Selby 
shipbuilders were recently stopped for riveters; the exchange rap- 
idly secured them a gang from Birkenhead. 

In the course of time, the classification of unemployed skilled 
workers in the files of the labor exchange has greatly improved, 
partly by the diligent study of the different local trades on the part 
of the managers of the exchanges and partly by the issue, from time 
to time, of revised and corrected lists of occupations from head- 
quarters. 

One advantage to employers which, curiously enough, few of them 
seem as yet to have made a very full use of is that the local records 
of the labor exchange put them in a better position, before accept- 
ing a contract or entering upon an extension of their plant, to get 
an idea of the amount of labor of the type required which is likely 
to be available. 

Again, in spite of the instances given above of attempts at regu- 
larizing employment, it must be admitted that as yet comparatively 
few of the lesser employers of labor seem to have grasped the saving 
to themselves which might be realized from pooling their labor re- 
serves with those of other employers. Where plenty of men anxious 
to secure work are hanging about the gates of the individual factory 
or yard there is, first, a continual temptation to the foreman or em- 
ployment manager to dismiss a man for the slightest cause ; and this 
means an unnecessarily large labor turnover, implying often lower 

1 " The Advantages of the Labor Exchange to the Large Employer," by Arnold S. 
Rowntree, M. P. Privately printed (1913?). 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 47 

production, more accidents, favoritism, demoralization, and general 
dissatisfaction among the men. Then there is the deterioration in 
the men themselves from being irregularly employed or from being 
subject to undeserved and often rash dismissal. All this must 
eventually tell upon the cost of production. In Great Britain the 
discussion of questions such as these has been so long continued that 
many of the larger and more intelligent employers were glad to get 
rid of the line of applicants at their doors, which to them was at once 
a source of waste and a secret cause of moral uneasiness. Some of 
those seen expressed themselves as highly gratified by the results of 
hanging out the little enameled shield proclaiming that all labor 
taken on by the firm was hired through the labor exchange and con- 
fessed their previous error in believing an individual reserve of labor 
an indispensable precaution. 

Where labor is obtained by advertisement, the expense saved, in 
some cases which have come to the writer's notice, from using the 
labor exchange instead has been considerable. An employer who 
on one occasion spent a three hours' railway journey in looking 
through a batch of answers to one advertisement later on had the 
same type of employee supplied him by the labor exchange in his 
town without any cost and trouble to himself. Reference has already 
been made to the arrangement under which employment officers of 
large concerns are permitted to select employees from a number of 
applicants submitted to them in a room at the exchange placed at 
their disposal. Rural employers save whole days by sending a post 
card where previously they had to drive around or attend a fair 
to secure farm servants. 

Many other instances might be given of the advantage of a national, 
system of labor exchanges to employers as experienced in the United 
Kingdom. In the case of the North of England at least, with which 
the writer is more familiar than with the rest of the country, this 
advantage was striking and substantial, not merely theoretical. Nat- 
urally there is always room for improvement in the efficiency of the 
service, and the growth in the number of employers making use of 
it in itself produces better and better results in individual placements. 

ADVANTAGES TO WORKERS. 

The advantages to the workers are more widely appreciated. In 
the first place it is of obvious advantage to organized labor to have 
the country aroused on the seriousness of the problem of unemploy- 
ment, and the labor-exchange system, with its careful collection of 
statistical material, undoubtedly contributes to this. Indeed, the 
labor exchanges bill was supported by the Labor Party "on the 



48 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

ground that reliable data for effective unemployed legislation would 
be secured as a result of its operations." x 

Yet at the outset the attitude of the trade-unions in Great Britain 
was anything but sympathetic. Many of them feared that, in spite 
of protestations to the contrary, blacklegs were going to be supplied 
in case of strikes or that it would be made easier for employers to 
secure labor at less than the current rates of wages. One or two of 
the larger unions, however, realized from the beginning that the labor 
exchanges only menaced the interests of labor if and to the extent to 
which organized labor refused to use them. Thus, in a communi- 
cation to the Iron Founders' Society by the general secretary of the 
Federation of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades, dated June 
4, 1910, we read : 

It is to lessen the competition of so many sources of labor supply 
that the federation urge the members of the affiliated societies to make 
the fullest possible use of labor exchanges. If employers realize that 
by applying to these institutions they can obtain an immediate supply 
of dependable and efficient workmen, they will at once discard all 
except this one source and make as full and exclusive use of these 
institutions as it is desirable they should. 

These institutions have come to stay. If they are ignored by the 
organized trades, they will be used by the nonsociety men who, freed 
from the supervision, influence, and example of the trade-union move- 
ment and protected and encouraged by a department of the State, 
will feel themselves justified in selling their labor at a rate which will 
be governed solely by their inclination and necessity in open defiance 
of the general interests of their craft and of the conditions which 
apply to their particular trade. Labor exchanges will thus become 
the rivals and competitors of the trade-unions and the happy hunting 
ground of employers who wish to engage cheap labor, and the fault 
will lie at the door of those who by their abstention presented these 
exchanges as a monopoly to men who declined to pay a trade-union 
contribution, and who will constitute a State-aided menace to the 
observation of trade-union conditions. It is necessary that trade- 
unionists shall use these exchanges as a measure of protection to the 
funds of their own societies. 

It was only to be expected that everything would not go smoothly 
at first from the point of view of labor ; but the actual instances in 
which a labor exchange was perverted to serve the interests of the 
employing class on investigation resolved themselves into very few, 
indeed. The letter just' quoted, for instance, while encouraging the 
affiliated societies to send in well-authenticated causes of complaint 
to be brought before the Board of Trade, says that " complaints in- 
numerable have already been made, many of which on investigation 
have been found to be paltry and unfounded." One of the cases, 
occurring soon after the establishment of the exchanges, which 

1 Labor Yearbook, London, 1916, p. 325. 



THE BKITTSH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 49 

raised a storm of indignation, was, indeed, a bad one. The super- 
vising officer of the Yorkshire division, in a circular addressed to 
boards of guardians (public charity authorities), drew attention to 
the shortage of female labor for the worsted industry in the rural 
districts around Bradford and Halifax, and for the woolen industry 
of the upper Colne Valley, and suggested that, with the help of the 
labor exchanges in the division, places might be found for widows 
and daughters from 13 years of age in receipt of outdoor relief, if 
they were willing to remove to these districts. The wages offered 
he represented as the standard rates for the districts. The trade- 
unions in the towns named had no difficulty in showing that the 
wages offered were below standard rates and that there were num- 
bers of unemployed without the importation of paupers. Obviously 
it was a case of overzeal on the part of the official concerned, acting 
on a suggestion from an employer and without malice or corruption. 
He was promptly removed. 

In spite of rumors which were current for some time that the ex- 
changes discriminated against trade-unions, rumors which on in- 
vestigation always turned out to be baseless, the discontent of the 
organized workers did not last long. Generally speaking, more in- 
telligent comprehension of the wider social aims of the system is to 
be found among labor leaders than among employers. Once the 
original prejudice was broken down — sometimes as a result of a 
lecture campaign by the exchange officials in their own time — they 
realized the importance of making the fullest possible use of these 
new institutions in order to "permeate them," as one trade-union 
official said, "with a trade-union atmosphere." Of course the ex- 
changes have not in any proved case leaned toward the unions in 
defiance of the rules prescribed for them by the Board of Trade, but 
in some cases a most cordial cooperation between the trade-union sec- 
retaries and the staff of the exchanges has been established which 
indirectly benefits the unions. Not infrequently the membership 
books of the unions are kept at the exchanges to enable the officials 
rapidly to ascertain which members are out of work. In the insured 
trades it is necessary for the manager of the exchange, who is also 
the insurance officer, to keep in close touch with the union secretaries. 
In one city the trades and labor council — the local federation of 
trade-unions— has established its headquarters next door to the ex- 
change and encourages the officials to come in at any time to consult 
with the secretaries when in need of men of any particular descrip- 
tion not on the register of applicants. In some towns trade-unions 
make extensive use of the privilege granted them under the regula- 
tions of the Board of Trade of holding meetings after business hours 
on the premises of the labor exchange. Such permission is only given, 
47784°— 16 1 



50 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

however, subject to the approval of the local trade advisory com- 
mittee, upon which employers are equally represented with the work- 
ers, and a fee, often only nominal, is charged. 

Obviously the fear that a larger knowledge of available labor 
would enable employers to lower wages proved groundless, since 
that tendency was balanced by an equal enlargement of the workers' 
knowledge of available jobs both in their own town and elsewhere. 
Indeed, as a rule, employers had had better facilities in the past to 
find out what labor was available than the individual unemployed 
workman had to find out what jobs there were. But the fact that 
new vacancies are continually seen posted up on the bulletin boards 
of the exchanges also has changed the mental outlook of the unem- 
ployed worker. Even if none of the vacancies posted on a particular 
day happen to be suitable, the knowledge of a continued stream of 
fresh jobs is apt to keep up courage and to dissipate that mental 
depression which in days gone by resulted from a fruitless tramp 
between the different possible sources of employment. And by lifting 
that depression, that fear of being unable to secure a job of any kind 
impressed by the legend read on a hundred doors, " No new hands 
taken on to-day," the bulletin board of the labor exchange has given 
the man out of work a more courageous stand when jobs are offered 
him at less than standard rates of wages. Both through the use of 
labor exchanges by trade-unions and from this natural cause, there- 
fore, their general effect on wages undoubtedly, in so far as there was 
any effect at all, has been beneficial to the workers. Fortunately for 
their sound development, the beginning of the British labor exchanges 
coincided with a period of rising good trade. It meant that the 
knowledge of vacancies in different centers stiffened the workers in 
their demands, and, although probably it did not have much effect 
on wages in the aggregate, it did induce employers in the low-wage 
districts to offer wages coming up more nearly than before to those 
paid in neighboring centers with higher standard rates. 

The effect of this tendency, however, is exceedingly slow and must 
not be overrated. Firms notorious for the payment of low wages are, 
on the whole, still in a position — after the exchanges have been in 
existence for five years — to secure a sufficient labor supply without 
using the exchanges. Also, though it is often charged by employers 
that the labor exchanges attract and supply men of the lowest grade 
who "won't work," actual experience seems to indicate that this 
class of persons, which is willing to accept almost any wage, so long 
as payment is immediate and no great or continuous effort is required, 
does not as a matter of fact make much use of the exchange. It has 
been confused with a different class, namely, that of men who are 
shiftless, not because they are "happy-go-lucky," but because they 
are constantly trying to " improve " themselves and never stay long 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 51 

enough in any one place really to do so. The manager of a large 
ship-repairing firm, though blaming the exchange for supplying too 
many men of that type, admitted that employers have chiefly them- 
selves to thank for the instability of so many workers. Often, while 
the best workers — those who constitute the irreducible minimum of a 
permanent force — are kept in regular employment at standard wages, 
the employer does not see the same necessity of offering good condi- 
tions to the rest of his employees, with the result that either he has 
to put up with second-rate men or that those who accept work at a 
lower wage than they consider fair are always discontented, do not 
improve in efficiency, and on the slightest provocation go off else- 
where "to improve themselves." 

The chief advantage of the exchanges to labor is not to be sought 
in the effect on wages, but in an appreciable shortening of the search 
for work, especially when employment is difficult to get in the work- 
er's own town. To the skilled and highly organized men the labor 
exchange has little to offer locally. Usually the employers know 
where to find them, and the members of the union, at their ordinary 
meeting place, are as quickly informed of new vacancies when they 
arise as is the clerk at the labor exchange. But the widened field of 
inquiry, through the operation of the interlocal scheme of registra- 
tion, has been of help even to the most strongly organized workers. 
Thus one very able and influential trade-union official, though some- 
what critical of the labor exchanges and complaining especially of 
their lack of understanding of the specific needs of local trades and 
their ignorance of local customs, went on to say that trade-unions 
by themselves never could have hoped to organize so efficient an inter- 
local registration service, and that in his opinion the system had 
quite appreciably shortened the period of the search for work when 
work had to be sought outside the unemployed worker's own town. 

The advancing of railway fares to men for whom work is found 
in other towns is a boon that is much appreciated and, curiously, little 
abused. In the year ending September, 1914, nearly $37,000 was 
advanced in about 20,800 cases; the total number of advances made 
from the commencement of the system to that date being about 54,800 
and amounting to about $87,600. The advances may be made only 
to applicants placed more than 5 miles from their homes; and local 
officers are especially warned "to avoid unduly encouraging rural 
laborers to migrate from the country to the towns or between Great 
Britain and Ireland." x 

Application for an advance may be made by a workman when 
engaged through the exchange for work at a distance. In that case, 

1 For the same reason, that of preventing the encouragement of a rural exodus, local 
exchanges are not allowed to disseminate information on openings in foreign countries 
except with the special permission of the central office in London. 



52 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

the employer agreeing, he is provided with a voucher exchangeable 
for a railroad ticket, the cost of which is deducted in installments 
from his weekly wages. Or, an employer may ask the exchange to 
advance the amount of the fare and refund it. The amount which 
the Board of Trade has failed to recover has remained almost negli- 
gible in comparison with the importance of these transactions. No 
allowance is made for conveyance of the worker's' family. 

A few figures will show the importance of the interlocal service. 
The vacancies filled in 1915 included no less than 283,644 cases, 1 or 
22 per cent of the total number, in which persons were placed in ex- 
change districts other than those in which they were registered. The 
corresponding number for 1914 was 177,312, or 16 per cent of the 
total, and for 1913 110,992, or 12 per cent. The increase is mainly 
accounted for by the war, especially the transference of labor for the 
erection of munition factories and huts for military camps, and by 
the demand for munition workers. In 1915 67,557 transferences, or 
nearly one-quarter of the total number, were beyond the limits of 
the exchange division. Of the total number of vacancies filled in 
1914j 113,267, or over one-tenth, were filled by applicants residing 
more than five miles from the place where the work was to be per- 
formed. More recently the attitude of the workers toward the labor 
exchanges has been considerably modified by unemployment insur- 
ance which, as we have seen, is largely administered through the in- 
strumentality of the exchanges and for certain classes of labor makes 
their use obligatory. It has brought more of the best type of worker 
into contact with the exchanges, men who previously were prejudiced 
against them. Of course, every expansion in its appeal means for a 
placement bureau not only so much added business, but also so much 
more efficient business. The larger the volume of transactions, the 
easier it is suitably to fit demand and supply. 

The labor exchanges, in some cases, have been of some assistance 
to benefit societies, hospitals, trade-unions, tuberculosis committees, 
and other bodies in finding suitable employment for incapacitated 
workers. In this they directly contribute to the solvency of these 
societies and institutions and at the same time help to prevent that 
demoralization which so often comes to the partly disabled as a result 
of complete idleness. Especially in connection with the, national 
health insurance scheme, local insurance committees have in some 
cases benefited considerably from the willing cooperation of labor- 
exchange managers in suitably placing persons whose support other- 
wise would have fallen on their funds. 

1 196,057 men, 53,096 women, 19,976 boys, and 14,515 girls. 



THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF LABOR EXCHANGES. 53 

ADVANTAGES TO THE STATE. 

We have here reached the consideration of advantages from a 
national system of labor exchanges, as exemplified in the United 
Kingdom, not only to employers or workers but to the State as a 
whole. With all its faults and shortcomings, in spite of the large 
discrepancy which we have found to exist, even during a favorable 
period, between the volume of offer and of demand registered, this 
system must undoubtedly be pronounced a national benefit. We 
have only to picture to ourselves the almost entire lack of provision 
for "marketing labor" prior to 1910, the failure of the sporadic 
attempts that had been made here and there to set up a machinery 
for bringing together labor and the demand for labor, to realize 
that for the first time a whole industrial nation is actually in posses- 
sion of a means of securing accurate knowledge of the labor situation. 
The direct services rendered to employers and employees quite apart, 
this in itself has proved of inestimable advantage to the country, 
especially in the present war. 

WTiatever may or may not have been at fault with British " pre- 
paredness " in other directions, in her system of labor exchanges she 
did have ready, at the moment of need, a barometer of employment 
which was of the highest value, aside from the point of view of 
industrial recruiting and the manufacture of munitions. It was 
possible from the outset to forestall distress arising from unemploy- 
ment owing to the sudden changes in the demand for commodities 
by drafting the workers displaced in one locality or industry to 
others where their qualifications were needed. Jewelry workers from 
Birmingham found remunerative employment in the manufacture of 
small arms in Sheffield; army and ordnance clerks, not available in 
sufficient number in some of the smaller towns where military head- 
quarters are situated, were introduced from the larger commercial 
centers where, owing to a decrease in shipping, there was a surplus 
of experienced office workers. With the aid of actual knowledge con- 
cerning the state of employment — even though that knowledge was 
necessarily incomplete — it was possible to stimulate public and pri- 
vate employment with a view to avoiding distress from unemploy- 
ment. The labor exchanges at one time indicated what appeared 
to be a total standstill in the building trade, and Parliament 
was induced to pass a relief measure enabling municipalities and 
other public bodies to draw upon the treasury to a greater extent 
than under previous enactments for funds with which to carry 
through housing schemes for the working classes that would absorb 
large numbers of men engaged in that trade. 1 On the other hand, 

1 Owing to the enlistment of large numbers of men, the abnormal unemployment rate 
in the building trades soon subsided, and few of the contemplated building schemes have 
actually been carried out. 



54 BULLETIN OP THE BUREAU OP LABOR STATISTICS. 

the knowledge of the labor market provided by the labor exchanges 
was of help in discouraging injudicious attempts at relief measures' 
made in the excitement of the first few weeks of the war. In spite of 
the greatest scarcity of labor witnessed by the present generation, the 
harvests of both 1914 and 1915 were saved by a methodical and effi- 
cient supplying, through the labor exchanges, of farmers with the 
most needed labor. Many other services have been rendered by the 
labor exchanges in the emergency which overcame the nation that no 
public authority could have rendered five years ago. 1 

The writer has heard many complaints of the large volume of 
seemingly useless statistics required from the labor exchanges by the 
central clearing office. It is difficult to judge whether the tabulations 
of daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly data are really going to be of 
value some day in a more comprehensive study of the whole problem 
of unemployment than any yet made. They are admittedly only 
partly of value for immediate purposes. But, a priori, the writer 
inclines to the view that even a little wasteful expenditure on statis- 
tical work for a few years is preferable to the possible waste of so 
great an opportunity for securing facts which eventually may prove 
of the highest social importance. One employer seriously argued 
that by throwing an additional burden on the cost of production, 
however small, legal provisions such as labor exchanges could only 
add to the difficulties of manufacturers in competition with those of 
other countries, and therefore to unemployment. The answer is 
that, of course, there may be individual concerns so situated that 
they can not get any financial advantage out of the labor exchanges 
which would balance the amount of their tax contributions for their 
support. But spread over the taxpayers as a whole, the total cost 
is practically negligible compared with the saving from maladjust- 

1 Complete knowledge of the aid which, the national system of labor exchanges has ren- 
dered in preventing distress from unemployment and in shaping the Government's labor 
policy after the Outbreak of the war will be available only when the Board of Trade pub- 
lishes the complete report of its activities during that period. The industrial crisis 
feared in August and September of 1914 as a result of the shock received by the financial 
system, the closing of markets, the dislocation of traffic, and other causes, did not take 
place. But many trades were very seriously affected by unemployment, and only recov- 
ered slowly. Some have practically disappeared, and the workers usually engaged in 
them have been absorbed in others. At the same time, a shortage of labor, resulting 
from the removal — at first of thousands, then of millions — of men from industry gave 
rise to entirely new and unforeseen problems. In some cases the rush of volunteer work- 
ers into all sorts of productive occupations actually led to a dismissal of the regular work- 
ers — this, as we have seen, was the case especially in some women's employments — and a 
severe depression of wages. The labor exchanges by themselves could not, of course, 
regulate conditions such as these. But they played a large part in the work of local 
committees for the prevention and relief of distress which, at the instigation of the Local 
Government Board, were created in every center of industry. These representative bodies 
had to rely for their knowledge of the state of employment almost entirely on the local 
labor exchange, whose manager, under instructions from headquarters to render all the 
services in his power, in many cases acted as joint secretary of the committee or as chair- 
man of a subcommittee charged with a continuous survey, during the war, of the state 
of employment in the locality. 



THE BBITISH SYSTEM OF LABOB EXCHANGES. 55 

ment, from suffering, and from human deterioration. There can be 
no doubt that in the United Kingdom, even in these initial five years, 
when naturally the cost per vacancy filled was higher than it will 
be when the exchanges are more universally used by employers and 
workers, they have been a paying proposition from the point of 
view of national economy. Indeed, there is not now any responsible 
group of persons, so far as known to the writer, who would seriously 
wish to see them abolished. 

CONCLUSIONS. 

The practical value of the British system of labor exchanges has 
hardly yet had time to be tested fully, at any rate in the period pre- 
ceding the present war. While it is possible to come to certain definite 
conclusions, a complete judgment must be withheld until a longer 
period of working under normal circumstances has elapsed. One 
critic observes 1 that — 

In too many instances, as yet, the labor exchange is an engine which 
is working extremely well but which has not attached to it the rolling 
stock of social progress. But it is of the greatest importance, none 
the less, to have prepared at a time of prosperity such an engine 
which at any moment, apart from fulfilling a useful national purpose, 
can be hinged on — as it has been in the case of unemployment insur- 
ance — to new measures of social reform. 

The present writer, in 1911, wrote : 2 

It would be unreasonable to expect that after so short an existence 
the labor exchanges should show a better result. Indeed, consider- 
ing the distrust, indifference, and political hostility against which 
they have contended, the results so far attained are very encouraging. 

He would now go further and say that the labor exchange has fully 
proved itself as a social instrument of the highest value, even with- 
out the attachment of other measures of reform. It has brought 
thinking persons both of the employing and working class to a fuller 
realization of the many misfits, hardships, physical and moral 
breakdowns which could be avoided by a more careful selection of 
employees on the one hand and of positions on the other. It has 
provided the nation with reliable data on the state of employment, 
comparable for different times, different trades, and different locali- 
ties, on a sufficient scale to permit of safe deductions. It has helped 
the scientific analysis of the problem of unemployment, and thereby 
brought appreciably nearer its final solution. It has contributed to 
our knowledge of the causes of and best remedies for specific social 
problems, such as casual and seasonal irregularity of employment. 

1 D. Caradog Jones, M. A., F. S. S., in Bulletin of the International Association on 
Unemployment for July-September, 1913. 

2 Bulletin of the International Association on Unemployment for October-December, 
1911. 



56 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

It is sometimes said that labor exchanges can not create work when 
there is none available. But, in a sense, they undoubtedly have in- 
creased the volume of employment, and this in more than one way : 
by helping employers to secure labor when none was locally available 
and none could have been procured without the aid of a nation-wide 
apparatus of inquiry; by shortening the average duration of the 
unemployment which results when the opportunity for work is in 
one place and the person looking for it in another; by forcing 
men who otherwise would have been content with intermittent 
employment of one or two days each week, to secure more regular 
work or none at all, and by thus indirectly compelling State and 
community to make provision for those who encumber the labor 
market and live on precarious "catch jobs" because old age or ill 
health prevents them from working more regularly ; by placing those 
desirous of work, especially boys and girls, more fittingly, thus 
preventing frequent changes attended by periods of idleness; by 
preventing in all these various ways that moral deterioration which 
is apt to result from long or frequent periods of involuntary idle- 
ness, and to lead to an unemployment problem which is not caused 
by inability to secure work, but by unwillingness to perform it. 
Thus, not to any considerable extent so far, perhaps, yet noticeably, 
the British system of labor exchanges has reduced unemployment. 



APPENDIXES. 
APPENDIX A.— LABOR EXCHANGES ACT, 1909. 

AN ACT to provide for the establishment of labor exchanges and for other 
purposes incidental thereto. (20th September, 1909.) 

1. (1) The Board of Trade may establish and maintain, in such places as 
they think fit, labor exchanges, and may assist any labor exchanges maintained 
by any other authorities or persons, and in the exercise of those powers may, 
if they think fit, cooperate with any other authorities or persons having powers 
for the purpose. 

(2) The Board of Trade may also, by such other means as they think fit, 
collect and furnish information as to employers requiring workpeople and work- 
people seeking engagement or employment. 

(3) The Board of Trade may take over any labor exchange (whether estab- 
lished before or after the passing of this act) by agreement with the authority 
or person by whom the labor exchange is maintained, and any such authority 
or person shall have power to transfer it to the Board of Trade for the pur- 
poses of this act. 

(4) The powers of any centralbody or distress committee, and the powers 
of any council through a special committee, to establish or maintain, under the 
Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905, a labor exchange or employment register shall, 
after the expiration of one year from the commencement of this act, not be 
exercised except with the sanction of, and subject to any conditions imposed by, 
the Local Government Board for England, Scotland, or Ireland, as the case 
may require, and that sanction shall not be given except after consultation with 
the Board of Trade. 

2. (1) The Board of Trade may make general regulations with respect to the 
management of labor exchanges established or assisted under this act, and 
otherwise with respect to the exercise of their powers under this act, and such 
regulations may, subject to the approval of the treasury, authorize advances 
to be made by way of loan towards meeting the expenses of workpeople travel- 
ing to places where employment has been found for them through a labor 
exchange. 

(2) The regulations shall provide that no person shall suffer any disqualifi- 
cation or be otherwise prejudiced on account of refusing to accept employment 
found for him through a labor exchange where the ground of refusal is that 
a trade dispute which affects his trade exists, or that the wages offered are 
lower than those current in the trade in the district where the employment is 
found. 

(3) Any general regulations made under this section shall have effect as if 
enacted in this act, but shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament as soon 
as may be after they are made, and, if either House of Parliament within the 
next forty days during the session of Parliament after any regulations have 
been so laid before that House resolves that the regulations or any of them 
ought to be annulled, the regulations or those to which the resolution applies 
shall, after the date of such resolution, be of no effect, without prejudice to the 
validity of anything done in the meantime under the regulations or to the mak- 
ing ef any new regulations. 

57 



58 BULLETIN" OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

(4) Subject to any such regulations, the powers of the Board of Trade under 
this act shall be exercised in such manner as the Board of Trade may direct. 

(5) The Board of Trade may, in such cases as they think fit, establish ad- 
visory committees for the purpose of giving the board advice and assistance in 
connection with the management of any labor exchange. 

3. If any person knowingly makes any false statement or false representa- 
tion to any officer of a labor exchange established under this act, or to any 
person acting for or for the purposes of any such labor exchange, for the pur- 
pose of obtaining employment or procuring workpeople, that person shall be 
liable in respect of each offense on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding 
ten pounds. 

4. The Board of Trade may appoint such officers and servants for the pur- 
poses of this act as the board may, with the sanction of the treasury, determine, 
and there shall be paid out of moneys provided by Parliament to such officers 
and servants such salaries or remuneration as the treasury may determine, 
and any expenses incurred by the Board of Trade in carrying this act into 
effect, including the payment of traveling and other allowances to members of 
advisory committees and other expenses in connection therewith, to such amount 
as may be sanctioned by the treasury, shall be defrayed out of moneys provided 
by Parliament. 

5. In this act the expression " labor exchange " means any office or place 
used for the purpose of collecting and furnishing information, either by the 
keeping of registers or otherwise, respecting employers who desire to engage 
workpeople and workpeople who seek engagement or employment. 

6 . This act may be cited as the Labor Exchanges Act, 1909. 

APPENDIX B.— GENERAL REGULATIONS MADE BY THE BRITISH BOARD OF TRADE 
IN PURSUANCE OF SECTION 2 OF THE LABOR EXCHANGES ACT, 1909. 



Registration of applicants for employment. 

I. (1) Applicants for employment through a labor exchange shall register 
and shall renew their registration there in person, if they reside within three 
miles of the exchange or within such other distance as the Board of Trade 
may direct from time to time, either generally or as regards any specified dis- 
trict or class of applicants. 

i (2) In the case of applicants not residing within the above limit of distance, 
the officer in charge of the labor exchange may accept registration or renewal 
of registration through the post. 

(3) Applicants shall register upon a form containing the particulars set 
forth in the first schedule hereto, subject to such modifications as may be made 
by the Board of Trade from time to time, either generally or as regards any 
specified district or trade or class of applicants. 

(4) The above regulations shall not apply to juvenile applicants. 

Period of registration. 

II. Registration of applications for employment shall hold good for seven 
days from the date of registration or for such other period as the Board of 
Trade may from time to time direct either generally or as regards any specified 
district or trade or class of applicants, but may be renewed within that period 
for a like period and so on from time to time. 



APPENDIX B. 59 

Strikes and lockouts. 

III. (1) Any association of employers or workmen may file at a labor ex- 
change a statement with regard to the existence of a strike or lockout affecting 
their trade in the district. Any such statement shall be in the form set out in 
the second schedule hereto, and shall be signed by a person authorized by the 
association for the purpose. Such statement shall be confidential except as 
hereunder provided and shall only be in force for seven days from the date of 
filing, but may be renewed within that period for a like period and so on from 
time to time. 

(2) If any employer who appears to be affected by a statement so filed 
notifies to a labor exchange a vacancy or yacancies for workmen of the class 
affected, the officer in charge shall inform him of the statement that has been 
filed, and give him an opportunity of making a written statement thereon. The 
officer in charge in notifying any such vacancies to any applicant for employ- 
ment shall also inform him of the statements that have been received. 

Wages and conditions. 

IV. (1) The officer in charge of a labor exchange in notifying applications for 
employment and vacancies to employers and applicants, respectively, shall un- 
dertake no responsibility with regard to wages or other conditions, beyond sup- 
plying the employer or applicant, as the case may be, with any information in 
his possession as to the rate of wages desired or offered. 

(2) Copies or summaries of any agreements mutually arranged between as- 
sociations of employers and workmen for the regulation of wages or other con- 
ditions of labor in any trade may, with the consent of the various parties to such 
agreements, be filed at a labor exchange, and any published rules made by pub- 
lic authorities with regard to like matters may also be filed. Documents so 
filed shall be open to inspection on application. 

(3) No person shall suffer any disqualification or be otherwise prejudiced on 
account of refusing to accept employment found for him through a labor ex- 
change where the ground of refusal is that a trade dispute which affects his 
trade exists or that 'the wages offered are lower than those current in the 
trade in the district where the employment is found. 

Advance of traveling expenses. 

V. (1) Where an applicant for employment has been engaged through a labor 
exchange at which he is registered to take up employment at any place re- 
moved from the exchange or from his ordinary residence by more than five 
miles by the quickest route, or by such other distance as the Board of Trade 
may direct from time to time, either generally or as regards any specified dis- 
trict the officer in charge may, at his discretion, make an advance to the ap- 
plicant toward meeting the expenses of traveling to the place of employment. 

(2) The advance may be made at the request either of the employer or of the 
applicant. The person at whose request the advance is made shall give such 
undertaking with respect to the repayment of the advance as the Board of 
Trade, with the 'consent of the treasury, may from time to time prescribe either 
generally or as regards any specified district or class of applicants. 

(3) No advance shall be made where the officer in charge has reason to be- 
lieve that the employment falls within the terms of Regulation IV (3) hereof. 



60 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

(4) In making advances care shall be taken to avoid unduly encouraging 
rural laborers to migrate from the country to the towns or between Great 
Britain and Ireland. 

(5) The advance shall not exceed the amount required to defray the appli- 
cant's fare to the place of employment, and will be made by the provision of a 
ticket or pass, or, in exceptional circumstances, in cash. 

Employment outside the British Isles. 

VI. The officer in charge of a labor exchange shall consult the central office 
in London before notifying to applicants for employment vacancies at any 
place outside the British Isles. 

Advisory trade committees. 

VII. (1) There shall be established by the Board of Trade in such areas of 
the United Kingdom as they think fit advisory trade committees consisting of 
equal numbers of persons representing employers and workmen in the district 
and appointed by the Board of Trade after consultation with such bodies and 
persons as they may think best qualified to advise them on the matter, to- 
gether with a chairman, agreed upon by a majority both of the persons repre- 
senting employers and of the persons representing workmen, or in default of 
such agreement appointed by the Board of Trade. 

(2) It shall be the duty of advisory trade committees to advise and assist 
the Board of Trade in regard to any matters referred to them in connection 
with the management of labor exchanges. 

(3) The members of an advisory trade committee, including the chairman, 
shall remain in office for three years. 

(4) Vacancies, howsoever caused, occurring in the membership or chairman- 
ship of an advisory trade committee shall from time to time be filled in the 
same manner as provided by subclause (1) of this regulation in regard to the 
original appointment of members and chairman. Any person appointed to fill a 
vacancy shall not hold office after the expiration of the period during which the 
person in whose place he is appointed would have held office. 

(5) At the request of the majority either of the persons representing em- 
ployers or of the persons representing workmen on an advisory trade committee 
present at any meeting, voting on any particular question shall be so conducted 
that there shall be an equality of votes as between the persons representing 
employers and the persons representing workmen, notwithstanding the ab- 
sence of any member. Save as aforesaid every question shall be decided by a 
majority of the members present and voting on that question. 

(6) On any question on which equality of voting power has been claimed 
under subclause 5 of this regulation the chairman shall have no vote, but in 
case of the votes recorded being equal he shall make a report to that effect to 
the Board of Trade and may also, if he think fit, state his own opinion on the 
merits of the question. 

(7) Subject to these regulations the procedure of any advisory trade com- 
mittee shall be determined from time to time by the Board of Trade, or by the 
committee with the approval of the board. 

Grant of accommodation withm the premises of a labor exchange. 

VIII. (1) All applications for accommodation within the premises of a 
labor exchange shall be made to the officer in charge of such labor exchange, 



APPENDIX B. 61 

who shall consult the advisory trade committee for the district. Any such 
application shall only be granted for such purposes and on such terms and 
conditions as the committee may approve. 

(2) In the case of labor exchanges which were in operation before the 
passing of the Labor Exchanges Act, 1909, existing arrangements with regard 
to accommodation may be allowed to continue except in so far as they may 
be modified or canceled hereafter. 

Juvenile employment. 

IX. Subject to these regulations, special rules may be made from time to 
time by the Board of Trade, after consulting the Board of Education so far as 
regards England and Wales and the Scottish Education Department so far as 
regards Scotland and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland so far as regards 
Ireland, with respect to the registration of juvenile applicants for employ- 
ment ; that is to say, applicants under the age of 17 or such othfer limit as the 
board may fix, either generally or as regards any specified district or trade 
or class of applicants. 

The Board of Trade make these regulations by virtue of the power con- 
ferred upon them by section 2, subsection (1) of the Labor Exchanges Act 1909. 

Dated this 28th day of January, 1910. 

First Schedule. 

particulars to be included on the fokm for registration of adult applicants 

for employment. 

(N. B. — Applicants are not compelled to furnish all the particulars specified.) 

Surname Other names Age 

Address 

Work desired 

Last employer and previous employer in that class of work, with address and 
period and date of employment 

Qualifications for desired employment 

Also willing to take work as 

Whether willing to take work at a distance 

When free to begin work 



Second Schedule, 
form of statement referred to in regulation iii ( 1 ) . 

I, the undersigned, being duly authorized by (give the name of the asso- 
ciation) beg to notify that the above association has a trade dispute, involving 
(insert "a strike" or "a lockout" as the case may he), with (give the names 
of firms or class of firms or the name of the association). 

Dated this day of 19__.^ 

Signature 

Address _. : _____ 



62 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

APPENDIX C— SPECIAL RULES WITH REGARD TO REGISTRATION OF JUVENILE 
APPLICANTS IN ENGLAND AND WALES, MADE IN PURSUANCE OF REGULA- 
TION NO. IX OF THE GENERAL REGULATIONS FOR LABOR EXCHANGES. 

1. Juvenile applicants for employment shall register on the forms prescribed 
in the schedule to these rules, subject to such modifications as may. be made 
therein by the Board of Trade from time to time. Such applicants, or any 
prescribed class of such applicants, may be permitted in lieu of attending 
personally at a labor exchange to register their applications at such other 
places as may be recognized by the Board of Trade as suitable for the purpose. 
Forms containing such applications, if transmitted forthwith to a labor 
exchange, shall be treated as equivalent to personal registration. 

2. (1) Special advisory committees for juvenile employment shall be estab- 
lished in such areas as the Board of Trade may think expedient. These com- 
mittees shall include persons possessing experience or knowledge of education 
or of other conditions affecting young persons, appointed after consulting such 
authorities, bodies, and persons as the board think best qualified to advise 
them, and also persons representing employers and workmen, appointed after 
consulting any advisory trade committee established in the district in pur- 
suance of regulation No. VII of the general regulations, together with a 
chairman appointed by the board. 

(2) Such labor-exchange officers as may be designated by the Board of 
Trade, and such of His Majesty's Inspectors of Schools as may be designated 
by the Board of Education, may be present at meetings of the special advisory 
committees, but shall not be members thereof. 

3. Subject to these rules, the procedure of a special advisory committee for 
juvenile employment shall be determined from time to time by the Board of 
Trade or by the committee with the approval of the board. 

4. It shall be the duty of a special advisory committee to give advice with 
regard to the management of any labor exchange in its district in relation 
to juvenile applicants for employment. 

5. Subject to these rules, a special advisory committee may take steps, either 
by themselves or in cooperation with any other bodies or persons, to give 
information, advice, and assistance to boys and girls and their parents with 
respect to the choice of employment and other matters bearing thereon. Pro- 
vided that the Board of Trade and the officer in charge of a . labor exchange 
shall undertake no responsibility with regard to any advice or assistance so 
given. 

6. (1) If any local education authority for higher education which has or 
may acquire statutory powers for the purpose of giving advice, information, 
or assistance to boys and girls with respect to the choice of employment or 
other matters bearing thereon, submits to the Board of Education a scheme 
for the exercise of those powers, and the Board of Education, after consulting 
with the Board of Trade, approve that scheme with or without modifications, 
the foregoing rules shall, so long as the scheme is carried out to the satisfaction 
of the Board of Education, apply to the area of that local education authority 
with the following modifications: 

(a) The officer in charge of any labor exchange shall not undertake the 
registration of juvenile applicants for employment except in accordance with 
the provisions of the scheme. 

( & ) The special advisory committee for juvenile employment shall take no 
steps under rule 5 except in accordance with the provisions of the scheme. 

(c) The Board of Trade may, if they think fit, recognize, in lieu of any 
special advisory committee established or to be established under these rules, 



APPENDIX C. 63 

an advisory committee constituted under the scheme, provided that such com- 
mittee includes an adequate number of members possessing experience or 
knowledge of educational and industrial conditions, and thereupon the Board 
of Trade may, if the circumstances require, either dissolve any special advisory 
committee or modify its area and constitution. 

(2) Nothing in this rule shall affect the registration at any labor exchange 
of vacancies for juvenile workers notified by employers. 

7. These rules shall apply to the registration of juvenile applicants in Eng- 
land and Wales. 

These rules are made by the Board of Trade after consultation with the 
Board of Education in pursuance of regulation No. IX of the general regula- 
tions for labor exchanges managed by the Board of Trade. 

Dated this seventh day of February, 1910. 

Schedule to Special Rules. 

paeticulars to be included on the form for registration of juvenile appli- 
cants for employment. 

Surname Other names 

Date of birth 

Full address 

Name of last day school and date of leaving 

Standard or class in wdiich applicant was on leaving 

Whether applicant was a half-timer before leaving, and, if so, how long? 



Whether attending or proposing to attend any continuation or technical school, 
and, if so, in what course or subjects, and whether in the day or evening 



Employment or employments since leaving school : 

(1) 

(2) 

(3) 

Employment desired 

Whether willing to be apprenticed, and, if so, whether a premium can be paid. 



Whether willing to take work at a distance. 
Remarks 



APPENDIX D.— MEMORANDUM BY THE BOARD OF TRADE AND THE BOARD OF 
EDUCATION WITH REGARD TO COOPERATION BETWEEN LABOR EXCHANGES 
AND LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES EXERCISING THEIR POWERS UNDER THE 
EDUCATION (CHOICE OF EMPLOYMENT) ACT, 1910. 

1. We have had under consideration (a) the Education (Choice of Employ- 
ment) Act, 1910, and (&) the special rules with regard to registration -of juvenile 
applicants in England and Wales made on the 7th February, 1910, by the Board 
of Trade, after consultation with the Board of Education, under the Labor Ex- 
changes Act, 1909, and printed as an appendix to the present memorandum. 
Under the new act the councils of counties and county boroughs, as local educa- 
tion authorities, are empowered to make arrangements, subject to the approval 
of the Board of Education, for giving to boys and girls under 17 years of age 
assistance with respect to the choice of suitable employment, by means of the 



64 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

collection and the communication of information and the furnishing of advice. 
In the special rules of the Board of Trade two alternative methods are indicated 
by which information, advice, and assistance with respect to the choice of employ- 
ment and other matters bearing thereon can be given to boys and girls and their 
parents in connection with the working of labor exchanges. Paragraphs 2 to 5 
of the rules make provision for the establishment by the Board of Trade of 
special advisory committees for juvenile employment, which may, as one of their 
functions, take steps to give such- information, advice, and assistance, but with- 
out any responsibility with regard thereto being undertaken by the Board of 
Trade or the officers in charge of labor exchanges. Paragraph 6 of the special 
rules contemplates the case of a local education authority which has and desires 
to exercise statutory powers for the purposes of giving information, advice, and 
assistance, and provides that, where such powers are exercised in accordance 
with a satisfactory scheme, the registration of juvenile applicants for employ- 
ment shall not be conducted by the labor exchange except in accordance with the 
scheme, and that the Board of Trade may dispense with the services of a special 
advisory committee so far as the area of the authority is concerned. The en- 
actment of the Education (Choice of Employment) Act, 1910, renders it possible 
for the procedure contemplated by paragraph 6 of the special rules to be brought 
into operation. 

2. We are of opinion that the employment of juveniles should be primarily 
considered from the point of view of their educational interests and permanent 
careers rather than from that of their immediate earning capacities, and ac- 
cordingly we urge upon local education authorities the desirability of under- 
taking, in accordance with the principles set out in the present memorandum, 
the responsibilities offered to them by the new act. We consider that it is # of 
importance -that these responsibilities should be exercised in the fullest co- 
operaton with the national system of labor exchanges established under the 
Labor Exchanges Act, 1909, and the Board of Education will, therefore, before 
approving any proposals from local education authorities for the exercise of 
their new powers, require adequate provision to be made for such cooperation. 
Where a satisfactory scheme has been brought into force by a local education 
authority, paragraph 6 of the special rules will operate, and the Board of Trade 
will be prepared to recognize a committee of the authority as charged with 
the duty of giving advice with regard to the management of the labor ex- 
change for its area in relation to juvenile applicants for employment. There 
are certain areas in which, pending the passing of the act, the Board of Trade 
have already established, or have definitely undertaken to establish, special 
advisory committees under paragraphs 2 to 5 of the special rules, and we 
presume that the local education authorities for these areas will desire to 
continue the arrangements already made, at least until some further experi- 
ence has been gained, and will consequently defer the exercise of their powers 
under the act. So far as other areas are concerned the Board of Trade do not 
propose to take any steps for the establishment of special advisory committees 
until after the 31st of December, 1911, except in the event of the local educa- 
tion authority passing a formal resolution to the effect that they do not pro- 
pose to exercise their powers under the Choice of Employment Act. 

3. We recognize that the methods to be adopted by authorities in working 
the act must necessarily be subject to considerable variations in accordance 
with local conditions, and will, in particular, be affected by the distribution of 
the labor exchanges, the districts of which are not necessarily conterminous 
with the areas of authorities. We think, however, that in normal cases some 
such arrangements as are indicated in the following paragraphs are likely to 



APPENDIX D. 65 

be found effective in practice, and may be expected to insure a reasonable 
distribution and correlation of functions between tbe autborities and the labor 
exchanges. 

4. The work to be undertaken by public bodies in giving assistance in the 
choice of employment for juveniles may be regarded as having two branches. 
In the first place there is the task of giving such advice to boys and girls and 
their parents as will induce them to extend where possible the period of educa- 
tion, and to select, when employment becomes necessary, occupations which are 
suited to the individual capacities of the children, and, by preference, those 
which afford prospects not merely of immediate wages but also of useful train- 
ing and permanent employment. In the second place, there is the practical task 
of registering the actual applications for employment and bringing the appli- 
cants into touch with employers who have notified vacancies of the kind desired. 

5. In any scheme of cooperation put forward under the new act the first <&£ 
these two tasks, that of giving advice, should, we think, be assigned to v the 
local education authority, with the assistance of such information as to tlie 
conditions and prospects of particular kinds of employment as can be furnished 
by ^the Board of Trade through the labor exchanges. We think that the 
authority should act through a special subcommittee, which may, perhaps,, 
also be the subcommittee charged with the supervision of continuation and 
technical schools, and which should always include an adequate number of 
members possessing experience or knowledge of industrial as well as of educa- 
tional conditions. In its detailed working, which should include the keeping 
in touch with boys and girls after as well as before employment has been 
found for them, such a subcommittee will, we trust, utilize to the full the 
services not only of teachers and of school attendance officers, but also of 
voluntary workers, whose activities may here find one of their most valuable 
educational spheres ; but the work will be of a kind which depends largely upon 
skilled and effective organization, and it will probably be found desirable, as 
a rule, to put at the disposal of the subcommittee an executive officer who will 
act as its secretary and maintain the daily contact between the authority, the 
voluntary workers, and the labor exchange. 

6. As regards the second of these two tasks, namely, the registration of appli- 
cations for employment and the selection of applicants to fill vacancies notified 
by employers, there is need for cooperation between the education authority and 
the labor exchange, and direct relations should be established between the sub- 
committee or officer of the authority and the officer in charge of the juvenile 
department of the labor exchange. For this purpose it will probably be found 
convenient for the two officers to be located in the same or contiguous buildings. 
At present a good deal of the work done in connection* with the employment of 
children is done at the elementary and other schools at which the children 
are in attendance, and no doubt this will continue to be the case, at any rate 
so far as the giving of advice is concerned, but we desire to point out that the 
notification of applications for employment to a central office will increase the 
range of vacancies open to any one applicant, and will therefore advance the 
fundamental object of placing each applicant in the employment which best 
suits him, and to which he is best suited. We contemplate, therefore, that 
applications for employment from children still at school will continue to be 
received and entered upon the necessary cards by their teacher, but that the 
cards will then, generally speaking, be forwarded by him to the authority's 
officer. The applications from boys and girls who have left school can, we 
think, most conveniently be registered by the officer of the labor exchange, but 
arrangements should be made to admit of such applicants being interviewed by 
the authority's officer either at the time of registration or as soon as possible 

47784°— 16 5 



66 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 

after, as it is desirable that they should be fully advised before vacancies for 
employment are brought to their notice. All applications received in either of 
the ways indicated should at once be made available either in original or in 
copies for the use both of th£ education authority and of the labor exchange. 
Notifications of vacancies for employment should be made to the officer of the 
labor exchange, who will furnish the authority's officer with information as to 
each vacancy for which he proposes to submit a boy or girl, and with the name 
of any boy or girl whom he proposes to submit for it. Information passing 
between the authority and the labor exchange will naturally be held to be 
strictly for the purposes of their cooperation. We anticipate that in ordinary 
cases the question whether a particular vacancy is suitable for a particular 
boy or girl will give rise to no difference of opinion between the two officers. 
It will, however, probably be necessary to provide for the possibility of a dif- 
ference of opinion. We think, therefore, that as a rule the decision should rest 
with the authority's representative as regards any child who is still in attend- 
ance at an elementary or other day school or has not left the day school more 
than six months previously, and that as regards applicants who have passed 
this limit the decision should rest with the officer of the labor exchange, who 
will, however, consult the authority's representative in all cases in which this 
is practicable, and will in all cases inform him as to the manner in which each 
vacancy is ultimately filled. 

7. Should any scheme be submitted for the approval of the Board of Edu- 
cation under the act in which it is proposed to vary these limits or otherwise to 
depart materially from the scheme of cooperation outlined in this memorandum, 
it should be accompanied by a full statement of the special reasons urged by the 
local education authority in support of the proposed variation. The special 
circumstances of the case will then be considered jointly by the two departments. 

(Signed) Sydney Buxton, 

President of the Board of Trade. 
(Signed) Walter Runciman, 

President of the Board of Education. 

3rd January, 1911. 

APPENDIX E.— SCHEDULE USED IN UNOFFICIAL INVESTIGATION OF LABOR EX- 
CHANGES, 1913. 

I. EMPLOYERS. 

(1) What is their present attitude to the labor exchange? 

(2) What proportion of employers in the locality avail themselves of the 
labor exchanges to fill vacancies as they occur? 

(3) Do they* use the labor exchanges to an equal extent for filling vacancies 
for skilled and unskilled workers, and for male and female workers? If not, 
state and explain limited use of labor exchanges. 

(4) Do all departments of the local authority regularly use the. labor 
exchanges, and for all purposes of labor supply? If not, why not? 

(5) How are the employers who use labor exchanges satisfied as regards 
(a) rapidity of process; (&) suitability and choice of workers supplied; (c) 
effect on stability of workers; i. e., has it unsettled workers or encouraged 
unreasonable demands as regards wages and labor conditions? (On the other 
hand, has it increased the chances of good men to improve their position?) 

(6) Have labor exchanges been of any help to agricultural employers, or 
on the contrary tended to decrease their labor supply? 



APPENDIX E. 67 

II. WORKPEOPLE. 

(1) What is their present attitude to the labor exchange? 

(2) Are there any complaints as to supply of blackleg labor, or preference 
being given to nonunionists ? (If so, obtain absolutely reliable evidence.) 

(3) What, in the opinion of workers, has been the effect of the labor exchange 
on wages? Has it, in practiced enabled employers — especially of unskilled 
labor — to reduce wages by offering them a wider choice of applicants for work, 
or has it enabled workers to stand out for better terms? 

(4) Has the interlocal registration of vacancies tended to equalize wages as 
between different manufacturing towns? If so, has the tendency been in the 
upward or downward direction? 

(5) Has the use of the labor exchange substantially shortened the search 
for work on the part of bona fide applicants ? 

(6) What has been the effect of the labor exchange on trade-union member- 
ship, if any? 

III. LOCAL LABOR EXCHANGE (OR EXCHANGES). 

(1) Has the work of the labor exchange tended to increase casual labor by 
making it easier for employers to recruit occasional workers and for workers 
to throw up their jobs by providing a greater choice of alternatives? Has any 
definite policy of " decasualization " been followed, and with what amount of 
success ? 

(2) Give instances of any ascertained effect of labor-exchange activity on 
wages and labor conditions. 

(3) Is the juvenile department run by the labor exchange or by the educa- 
tion authority? In either case, w T hat is done in advice as to choice of employ- 
ment, and to what extent is the exchange actually used by children leaving 
school? Has the juvenile department actually succeeded in reducing juvenile 
unemployment and in preventing frequent changes of employment? 

(4) Is there a permanent surplus of female applicants for employment? If 
so, how are vacancies for casual women workers (such as charwomen) filled; 
on what principle? 

(5) To what extent, in the opinion of the officials, are the vacancies notified 
and applications made typical of the total demand and supply of labor in the 
locality? What proportion of the vacancies actually occurring during the 
year — roughly — is filled through the labor exchange? Explain any restriction 
of the use actually made of the labor exchange by workers and employers. 

(6) Has the system of unemployment insurance had any effect on the general 
work of the labor exchange? If so, describe and explain. 

(7) Any suggestions of the officials for improving the mechanism of the 
labor-exchange system, or for widening its sphere of usefulness. 

Note. — Many of the questions put above can be answered only by stating 
opinions. These should be given as fully as possible, with name and occupation 
(not for publication) of informant, and, if possible, in his own words. 

Rumors and insinuations should, as far as possible, be investigated and 
evidence be given of any complaints. 

All facts and illustrations to be given in sufficient detail to enable their full 
appreciation. 

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